They were not. The pieces were salvaged from a carved funerary figure, reshaped into chamfered blocks, and pressed into service as part of a lancet window jamb on the external face of the east wall of the south transept. A lancet window is a tall, narrow window with a pointed arch, common in Gothic ecclesiastical architecture, and the jamb is the vertical side framing it. Whoever repurposed these stones went to the trouble of cutting them to match the chamfered profile of the existing 13th-century jambs around them, a deliberate act of visual tidying that disguised the fragments so effectively that casual observation would give no hint of what they once were.

The two pieces are cut from fossiliferous limestone, a stone flecked with the remains of ancient marine organisms, and they date to the 13th or 14th century. Despite being reshaped, both fragments retain incised decoration: the image of an arm terminating in an outstretched hand holding a cross. The cross has rounded termini, meaning its arms end in circular finials rather than sharp points, and it bears a central boss, a raised circular element at the intersection of the arms. This kind of decorative detail was common on high-status tomb effigies of the period, where the carved figure might be shown holding a cross or other devotional object as a symbol of faith and rank. The original effigy, and whoever it commemorated, is now unknown. The fragments survive only because they were useful as building material, their imagery incidentally preserved in the act of being repurposed.