A stone sculpture once attributed to this stretch of the Shannon floodplain appears to have no firm basis in the archaeological record at all. The most plausible explanation is that it was a case of mistaken identification, the supposed sculpture conflated with a carved bust of post-1700 AD date that stood beside a nearby holy well, a holy well being a spring or water source regarded as sacred, often marked by small offerings, patron saints, or associated carvings built up around them over centuries.

The error is, in its own quiet way, revealing. It shows how readily one category of object, a post-medieval decorative bust, can be read as something older and more monumental when encountered in a landscape already saturated with early medieval significance. Clonmacnoise was one of the great monastic centres of early Christian Ireland, founded in the sixth century, and its surroundings carry enough genuine archaeological weight that an additional standing stone or carved figure might easily seem plausible. The bust itself, dateable to after 1700, would have been a relatively modest piece, perhaps a garden or estate sculpture repurposed or simply left beside the well, and its presence in that context is a small puzzle that the surviving records do not fully resolve.