The base and capital of a carved limestone baptismal font were recorded and sketched there in the mid-nineteenth century, but when later investigators looked for them, the pieces were simply gone. Not destroyed, as far as anyone knows; just absent, unaccounted for, quietly missing from the place they were documented to occupy.

The site itself has a long and layered history. The abbey at Foyran, known in earlier sources as Faebhrom or Faobhran, was founded most probably in the sixth century, according to Cogan writing in 1870. The Annals of the Four Masters record the death of Eochaidh, Abbot of Faebhran, at A.D. 754, which at least confirms that a functioning ecclesiastical community existed there well over a thousand years ago. By the time the Victorian artist and antiquarian George Du Noyer visited in 1864, what remained was a ruined nave and chancel church of multiple building phases. His watercolour, now held by the Royal Irish Academy, and his accompanying plan show that the structure began as a pre-Norman single-cell church, the kind of simple rectangular building typical of early Irish monasticism, to which a chancel was added at a later date. The earlier cell then became the nave. Du Noyer's sharp eye also caught details that speak to the building's age: a triangular-headed window in the south wall of the nave, a form associated with pre-Norman Irish church architecture, and a doorway set off-centre in the north wall. Alongside his drawings of the church, he sketched the base and capital of a limestone font, noting the place name's local pronunciation as "Wheeran".

What became of those two carved blocks is unknown. They were present and notable enough in 1864 for Du Noyer to record them carefully, but subsequent examination of the church and its surrounding graveyard turned up nothing. Whether they were removed, reused, buried, or simply overlooked in the undergrowth is a question the site itself no longer answers.