These architectural fragments came originally from Dunbrody Abbey in County Wexford, a Cistercian monastery founded in the twelfth century on the southern shore of the Wexford estuary, and they ended up in the care of the Office of Public Works following excavations at the site.

Dunbrody Abbey is among the better-preserved Cistercian ruins in Ireland. The Cistercians, a reforming monastic order who sought simplicity in both their rule and their architecture, built in a distinctively plain, austere style, which makes the survival of carved or decorated stonework from such sites all the more notable. Exactly what these fragments represent, whether carved mouldings, window tracery, doorway dressings, or something else, is not recorded here, but their removal to Kilkenny for safekeeping after excavation is a fairly common fate for loose architectural stonework from excavated ecclesiastical sites. The OPW depot at Leggetsrath, on the edge of Kilkenny city, functions as a kind of holding environment for objects and materials that require secure, stable conditions away from the elements.