Two metres tall above its plinth, it carries a long Latin inscription flanked by incised rose bushes in flower, a heraldic achievement framed by debased Ionic pilasters, ovolo scrolls delicately carved with foliage, and, at the very top, an obelisk lightly sculpted with a cross pattée and the letters IHS. Below the inscription sits an empty moulded frame, its panel long since lost, its original purpose uncertain. Whether it was always blank or once held a second inscription, nobody now knows. Flat on the ground beneath the whole composition lies a separate slab bearing the words OSTIVM MONVMENTI, meaning "the entrance to the vault", a quiet reminder that the stonework above is only the visible surface of something older and deeper.

The monument is dated 1629 and commemorates a man named Thomas, described in the Latin inscription as "the flower of Callan". The verse, transcribed and translated by the historian William Carrigan in 1905, is elegiac rather than merely commemorative: it addresses the stone directly, congratulates it on the honour of covering Thomas's bones, and closes with a line about learning to live for God alone. The heraldic achievement combines the arms of two prominent Kilkenny families. The dexter side carries a Talbot passant and mullets on a cross engrailed for the Comerfords; the sinister carries three swords in a particular arrangement for the Shees. Two crests sit above paired helmets, one showing a peacock's head with the motto VIRTVS VENVSTA, meaning "virtue is beautiful", the other a swan with the words VINCIT VERITAS, "truth conquers". A deeply cut mantling falls from both helmets and ends in large tassels. The overall shield motto reads SO : HOV : HOO : DEN, a phrase whose meaning has not been straightforwardly explained. The connection between the Comerford and Shee families through marriage was not unusual in late medieval and early modern Kilkenny, where these Old English Catholic families intermarried closely and used heraldry to assert continuity at a time when that continuity was under considerable pressure.