Only half of the original vessel survives. It is a quietly odd thing to encounter: a circular, flat-bottomed basin with gently tapering sides, its drain hole still clearly visible at the centre, doing its best to retain the form of something that once had a liturgical purpose, now displaced and incomplete.

The font belongs to the Early Christian and Medieval ecclesiastical complex at Kilmalkedar, a site that sits at the foot of the western slopes of Reenconnell hill, sheltered by spurs of the ridge on its northern and southern sides and looking out towards Smerwick Harbour. The measurements recorded for the surviving fragment give a sense of the original vessel's scale: internally, the basin is roughly 0.62 metres in diameter at the top, narrowing to 0.47 metres at the base, with a depth of around 0.15 metres, and walls only about 0.07 metres thick. A font of this kind, used for baptism, would typically have held water poured through or drained by exactly the small central hole that remains. Alongside the main fragments, a small curved piece of stone lies loose in the chancel. It carries two tiny holes on its upper surface and may once have served as a cover for the font, though there is an alternative possibility that it is a fragment of a rotary quernstone, the kind of hand-operated grinding tool commonplace in early medieval Irish life. The two objects could hardly be more different in function, which makes the uncertainty all the more interesting.