But tucked into the lower courses of the northeast boundary wall of St. John's graveyard is something far quieter: a small limestone fragment, roughly 38 centimetres by 16, carved with a scroll motif and mortared into the wall's internal face almost as an afterthought. It is the kind of thing that rewards a slow walk along the boundary rather than a glance from the gate.

The fragment is thought to have come originally from a medieval church that once stood on the site now occupied by St. John's Church of Ireland Cathedral. Wall monuments, which were carved commemorative panels set into the interior walls of churches, were common features of medieval ecclesiastical buildings, and the scroll decoration on this piece is consistent with that tradition. At some point, the stone was displaced from its original context and reused as building material in the graveyard wall, a fate that was not uncommon for carved stonework when older structures were demolished, modified, or simply fell into ruin. The practice of incorporating earlier carved stones into later masonry is sometimes called spolia, and it has the odd effect of preserving fragments that might otherwise have been lost entirely, even if it removes them from their original meaning and setting.