It measures less than half a metre in length and is badly cracked, worn smooth in places by centuries of weather. What survives is the torso of a medieval woman, headless, cut off at the waist, her identity entirely lost. The fact that she ended up recycled as building material tells its own quiet story about how the medieval world was gradually dismantled and repurposed.

The slab dates to the thirteenth century and was catalogued by John Hunt in 1974 as the upper portion of a female effigy. An effigy of this kind would originally have lain flat on or within a tomb chest, the carved figure serving as a permanent, idealised representation of the deceased. Hunt identified a right arm raised to hold a mantle string, and a brooch at the breast. A later study by Higgins in 2007 added further detail: the right arm appears to be wearing a gauntlet or glove, indicated by a flared form below the wrist, and the brooch fastens a garment with a V-shaped neckline that falls in folds or pleats. These are not incidental flourishes. Gloves and ring brooches in medieval funerary sculpture often carried specific meaning, signalling rank or, in the case of gloves, sometimes a connection to aristocratic or knightly households. The graveyard itself is associated with the parish church of St Kieran of Kells, and Kells Priory, the substantial Augustinian complex, lies roughly 120 metres to the north. Whether the slab originated there or elsewhere in the vicinity is not recorded, but the proximity is suggestive.