Most passers-by, if they notice it at all, would take it for a decorative flourish, but this fragment of carved stone dates to the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century and almost certainly began life as something far more substantial: a full-length tomb effigy, the kind of recumbent figure that once marked the graves of wealthy or prominent individuals inside a church. What survives is the head, neck, and a small portion of the shoulders and chest, measuring about forty centimetres in length. The nose and chin are badly chipped, but the oval eyes, straight mouth, and curling hair, which falls just to the ears, remain legible.

The figure was formally identified in 1938 through Office of Public Works files, though the wall it inhabits is considerably more recent. The detail that most animates it as a historical object is the large ring-brooch placed centrally on the chest. Ring-brooches were common fasteners for cloaks in medieval Ireland and Britain, but this one invites a specific comparison: two Hackett female effigies in the grounds of the church of St. John the Baptist in Cashel wear almost identical brooches, and both are dated by the art historian John Hunt, writing in 1974, to the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century. The hairstyle, too, finds a parallel in a head-slab held in the Vicar's Choral on the Rock of Cashel, the complex of ecclesiastical buildings that dominates the town from its limestone outcrop. Taken together, these comparisons suggest the bust belonged to a coherent local tradition of funerary sculpture, and that whoever commissioned it moved in circles prosperous enough to afford such work.

The bust sits in the south-west boundary wall of Burke's Lane, which meets Main Street at a right angle. At 3.1 metres above ground level it is easy to miss if you are not looking upward, but once located it rewards a closer look, particularly the ring-brooch detail, which retains surprising clarity despite the general weathering of the piece.