That is all that remains of what was once an effigial tomb slab, the kind of incised memorial that would have marked the grave of someone wealthy or prominent enough to be commemorated in stone, their likeness cut into the surface in the manner common across the 13th and 14th centuries. Even in its fragment form, there is something arresting about the detail. Whoever carved it took care with the drapery.

The slab came to light during drainage works along the River Nore in Kilkenny city, carried out between 2001 and 2003. Excavations recovered thirteen graveslabs in total, all found in association with the remains of a late medieval bridge just north of the present John's Bridge. The slabs had not ended up in the river by accident. Archaeologists concluded that they had most likely been deliberately cleared from a nearby graveyard, either that of St Mary's parish church, roughly a hundred metres to the west, or St John's Priory, about two hundred metres to the north-east, and repurposed as rubble to reinforce the protective apron around the bridge piers. It was a practical use of available material, and not an unusual fate for displaced grave markers in a period when bridge-building demanded whatever stone was to hand. The effigial fragment, catalogued as find number 2321, measures 0.43 metres long, 0.22 metres wide, and 0.1 metres thick.

Where the fragment is now is not known. Its current location had not been established at the time it was documented, which gives this small piece of carved limestone an additional layer of absence: separated first from its original grave, then from the river bed where it lay for centuries, and now untraced once more.