Somewhere in a graveyard in Hortland, County Kildare, there is an octagonal limestone font that nobody can currently locate. It has been measured, described, and even painted, yet its precise whereabouts within the burial ground remain unknown, which gives it an odd double status: a documented object that has, in practical terms, gone missing.

A font of this kind would originally have been used for baptism, the octagonal shape being a form with early Christian roots, the eight sides traditionally associated with resurrection and new beginnings. The Hortland example is a substantial piece: its outer circumference runs to roughly 1.83 metres, its diameter to about 0.61 metres, and it stands some 0.33 metres tall. These measurements were recorded by Morrin in 1999, and O'Leary, writing the same year, placed it within the graveyard at Hortland. An artist identified as K. Simms also produced a painted record of the font, meaning there is at least a visual document of what it looks like, even if the object itself has drifted out of easy reckoning. Whether it has been moved, buried under encroaching vegetation, or simply overlooked amid the headstones is not recorded.