It is easy to walk past without noticing, which is part of what makes it odd: a medieval sculpture, set into ordinary street furniture, in a small County Leitrim town.

The head is shield-shaped, roughly twenty centimetres high and fifteen centimetres wide, protruding from a flat stone that is likely sandstone. Locally, it is believed to be one of two such heads that originated in a medieval church, though which church is not recorded. At some point both heads were removed from their original setting and built into Crofton's house, a property that stood until it was demolished in the 1970s. When the house came down, this head was placed where it sits today, worked into the pillar on Green Street. The second head was not preserved in the same way, or at least was not documented, and its whereabouts remain unknown. The heads were first brought to wider attention by Graham Hull, working through Hugh Carey, and the account has not been substantially added to since.

Carved stone heads of medieval origin are not uncommon in Ireland, and their original functions are often debated. Some are thought to have been architectural features on church doorways or walls; others may have had apotropaic purposes, warding off misfortune. What is unusual about the Mohill example is its itinerary, moving from ecclesiastical stonework to a private house to a street pillar, accumulating a kind of informal civic status along the way, while its companion piece slipped quietly out of the record entirely.