A canopied tomb niche, a recessed arch designed to shelter an effigy or memorial, opens from the stonework at a height of 3.3 metres and a width of 3 metres, supported on short half columns whose moulded capitals are carved with small heads that gaze inward towards the chancel. The effect is one of quiet surveillance, the stone faces of the late medieval period still oriented towards a space where liturgy once took place.

Bradley and Dunne, writing in 1992, dated the niche itself to around AD 1400, placing its construction in the late medieval period when the friary was an active centre of Franciscan life. Sometime in the seventeenth century, a mural plaque was set into the earlier niche, a not uncommon practice in post-Reformation Ireland, where older architectural features were repurposed to accommodate newer commemorative fashions. The result is a layered object: a late medieval frame holding a baroque-era inscription, the two elements from different worlds but now inseparable.