Set into the north transept wall of a modern Carmelite church in Kildare town, a series of late medieval limestone panels quietly preserve one of the stranger carved figures you are likely to find in an Irish ecclesiastical setting. One panel, roughly half a metre tall and just over sixty centimetres wide, carries a centaur-like creature in relief: a man's head with a long beard sits atop a long neck and body, but the hind legs are human rather than equine, and a knotted tail curls upward to end in a fleur-de-lys. Beside this figure, an undulating grape vine runs along the left side of the panel, accompanied by two animals, and a small creature at the base, possibly a monkey, completes the composition. The carving is the kind of thing that rewards a second look, its details odd enough to suggest deliberate theological or allegorical purpose, though exactly what that purpose was remains unclear.

The origins of the panels are uncertain in an interesting way. They may have belonged to the Carmelite Friary that once stood immediately to the south of the current church, but according to Bradley and colleagues, writing in 1986, local tradition holds that they came instead from the Franciscan Friary, a separate medieval foundation also in Kildare. Chest tombs of the late medieval period were often decorated with dense figurative and foliate carving, and the grape vine in particular was a common motif with Eucharistic associations. The hybrid figure, however, sits outside the more conventional repertoire of saints and angels, suggesting either a craftsman working from an unusual source or a patron with eclectic tastes. Whichever friary originally commissioned the panels, their survival embedded in a later church wall is itself a small historical accident worth noting.