He measures just under two metres in length, and the detail cut into him is quietly extraordinary: a long gown falling to the ankles, a shoulder-cape with the hood pushed back so that its liripipe, the long tail of cloth common to medieval hoods, hangs down to his elbow. His sleeves end at the elbow with pendant lappets, decorative fabric strips that were a mark of fashionable dress in the medieval period. His hands are clasped. His hair curls below his ears, and he wears a beard. Beneath his feet is a foliate socle, a carved leafy base that was a conventional support for effigial figures of the period. His head rests on a double cushion.

The slab is carved from fossiliferous limestone, a stone visibly threaded with the remains of ancient marine creatures, and scholars date it to the second quarter of the fourteenth century, placing its creation somewhere between roughly 1325 and 1350. The art historian John Hunt, who catalogued medieval Irish effigies in a landmark two-volume study published in 1974, recorded it in careful detail, and his description remains the primary account of the figure. No name is attached to the man depicted. The clothing suggests someone of some social standing, the gown and hood reflecting fashions current in mid-fourteenth-century Europe, but whether he was a merchant, a civic official, or a member of the local clergy is not recorded. Kilkenny in this period was one of the most prosperous towns in medieval Ireland, and St Mary's was its principal parish church, so the quality of the carving is not entirely surprising, even if the man himself has slipped from memory.