It is not on display. It is not signposted. It is, in the bureaucratic language of stone cataloguing, simply KD021: a D-shaped column base, 23 centimetres wide and just over five centimetres tall, with a neat moulded surround running along its edge.

The fragment originally formed part of St Mary's medieval parish church in New Ross, County Wexford, a building with roots in the thirteenth century. The column base, a block that would have sat at the foot of a rounded pillar to distribute its load and provide a visual transition between shaft and floor, is stylistically consistent with that period. The moulded surround, a shallow decorative profile carved into the stone's perimeter, is modest but deliberate; it speaks to a craftsman working within the conventions of Gothic ecclesiastical architecture at a time when New Ross was one of the most commercially significant towns in Ireland. Sandstone, the material here, is softer and more workable than limestone, which made it attractive to medieval carvers but also more vulnerable to weathering and damage over the centuries.

How the piece came to be separated from the church and transferred to Kilkenny is not recorded in what survives about it. What remains is the object itself, measured and photographed, waiting in storage as a minor but genuine remnant of a medieval building programme that shaped the religious landscape of the south-east.