A few metres east of the north-east angle of the Church of Ireland church in Rathangan's graveyard, a carved stone sits repurposed as a grave marker. It is not a headstone in any conventional sense. The object is a medieval corbel, a projecting stone bracket once built into the wall of an earlier church to carry a beam or vault, and its underside still bears the rough, pock-marked texture produced by punch dressing, the technique of working stone with a pointed tool to produce an even, dimpled surface. More striking is its southern face, where a traceried window has been carved in relief, a miniature Gothic composition pressed into the surface of what was originally a structural element. Whoever repositioned this piece understood, at some level, that they were preserving something rather than simply filling a gap.

The medieval church from which the corbel came was dedicated to the Virgin Mary and had a documented history stretching back to at least 1297, when a vicar named Richard is recorded in connection with it. By 1306 it was described as a prebend of the diocese of Kildare, meaning its revenues supported a cathedral clergyman. It remained in use through the Late Medieval period, but by 1744 the building had fallen into serious disrepair. That year, Robert, Earl of Kildare, left £200 in his will toward rebuilding it. The Church of Ireland church now standing in the western part of the graveyard, a 19th-century structure, almost certainly occupies the footprint of that earlier foundation, layers of religious use accumulating on the same ground across several centuries. The corbel, meanwhile, was not incorporated into the new building but set loose in the graveyard, its carved face still legible, marking no particular grave with any particular name.