Its isolation is what makes it curious. One person, placed carefully east to west in the supine extended position conventional for Christian burial, with flat stones wedged against either side of the skull, a practice sometimes called the 'ear-muff' arrangement, which helped keep the head in position and is a recognisable marker of medieval interment. No obvious funerary context, no companions.

The site has a long and layered history before any of this came to light. In the 13th century, William le Gros built a castle on this ground, which subsequently passed through enough hands to acquire the name Grace's Castle. By 1566 it had been yielded to the Crown and converted into a county gaol, referred to in contemporary documents as a 'Sheire Gaol', functioning in that capacity until around 1794, when the structure was most likely rebuilt as a courthouse. The 18th-century courthouse that stands today probably incorporates fabric from that earlier castle. The burial itself was uncovered during an excavation led by Maedbh Saunderson in 2008, in the ground to the east of the courthouse. It was assigned to the third phase of medieval activity identified across the site, and a streambed was found running along the northern boundary of the excavated area, with the burial positioned just to its south. The skeleton was fully excavated and recorded, a solitary figure at the edge of what had once been a busy, organised stretch of medieval townscape.