Set into the north transept wall of Kildare's modern Carmelite church is a collection of five late medieval limestone panels that seem, at first glance, entirely at home in their surroundings. Look more closely, however, and their presence raises a quiet puzzle: nobody is entirely certain where they came from. The panels may have originated in the Carmelite Friary that once stood immediately to the south, but scholarship published by Bradley and colleagues in 1986 points instead to the Franciscan Friary nearby. Two medieval religious houses, one set of carved stones, and no definitive answer.

Among the five panels, one stands out for its delicacy. It is a small rectangular piece, just 29 centimetres high and 20 centimetres wide, carved in relief with the figure of an angel. The figure wears a round-necked, pleated garment and a head-band, with hands joined in a gesture of prayer or reverence. Scholars have tentatively identified the figure as either St Gabriel or St Michael, two archangels who appear regularly in late medieval devotional carving across Ireland and Europe. The piece was catalogued by Hunt in 1974, and it carries the quiet assurance of work made for a specific devotional purpose, probably set into an altar surround, a tomb, or a wall niche within whichever friary originally commissioned it. That the stone has survived at all, having apparently been moved at least once and incorporated into a later building, is itself a small historical accident worth pausing over.