The knight wears a metal skull-cap covered by a coif, and a chainmail hauberk protecting his torso as far as his knees.

[3] It is believed to represent Thomas de Cantwell (d. 1319), a Cambro-Norman adventurer who became Lord of Kilfane.

The stone effigy is thought to originally have been a sarcophagus slab which has since been set upright against an inner wall of the church.

[5][1] The statue represents an example of the high standard achieved by Irish sculptural workshops in the Pale prior to a cultural and economic decline marked by the Edward Bruce invasion and the arrival of the Black Death.

[6] Hubert Butler, essayist, recalled the local tale that children at the nearby Protestant school were sometimes punished by having to kiss the statue.