It is one of a matched pair of corbels, the bracket-like stones used to support a mantle shelf, and together they depict a man and a woman. The details of their clothing suggest a thirteenth-century date, placing their carving in the medieval period, when Carlow was a contested frontier zone between Anglo-Norman settlement and Gaelic territory.

Both stones are believed to have been taken from Ballymoon, a ruined castle a few miles to the south-east of Nurney. Ballymoon is an unusual structure in its own right, a large roofless enclosure of granite ashlar whose origins and purpose have long puzzled historians. If the corbels did indeed come from there, they represent a small fragment of whatever domestic or ceremonial interior the castle once contained. Corbels of this kind were common enough in medieval construction, used wherever a projecting stone was needed to carry weight or decoration, but carved portrait corbels are considerably rarer, and the survival of a matched pair is rarer still. The dress details that allow a rough dating are the kind of evidence that makes small objects like these disproportionately useful: fabric and fashion rarely survive in stone buildings, so when a sculptor renders a collar or a sleeve with enough care to be legible seven hundred years later, it becomes an unexpected record.