It is an early baptismal bowl, notable less for its size than for the quiet detail carved into it: a simple leaf patterning on its undersurface, the kind of ornamentation that only reveals itself to someone who thinks to look underneath.

The font belongs to what is known locally as the Black Abbey, a friary whose Augustinian community gave the surrounding area its name. The Urban Survey of Limerick, compiled by Bradley and colleagues in 1989, recorded the font's presence and noted its position beneath the tower structure. A baptismal font, for those unfamiliar with the term, is a basin used to hold water for the Christian rite of baptism, and early examples like this one are often among the oldest surviving objects within a monastic complex, outlasting roofs, walls, and carved altarpieces. The leaf patterning noted on the underside is described simply as a form of decoration, its exact age and the hand that cut it unrecorded in the surviving documentation.

The site itself carries the reference LI021-032006- in the national record, which places it within the broader complex of the Black Abbey. Visitors approaching the area should be aware that access to medieval fabric of this kind is not always straightforward; what survives of the friary is integrated into later structures and surroundings, and the font is not a prominently displayed object. Anyone with a particular interest in early ecclesiastical stonework would do well to enquire locally before visiting, and to bring the kind of patience that small, overlooked objects tend to reward.