The wall it sits in was built in 1804 to connect the south-western side of the church to the graveyard boundary, and at some point during that construction the panel was incorporated into it, reused as building material in the practical way of the era. It measures roughly 72 centimetres by 59 centimetres, modest enough to overlook, but its surface carries a carefully worked heraldic cartouche, the kind of decorative frame, oval or rectangular, used in the early modern period to display coats of arms with a degree of ceremony.

The panel dates to the early to mid-seventeenth century and displays the arms of Kelly impaling Grace, meaning the two families' coats of arms have been combined side by side on a single shield, as was customary to mark a marriage alliance. The Grace lion rampant has been incised into the limestone, which is fossiliferous, meaning the stone itself contains the faint outlines of ancient marine creatures pressed into its surface over millions of years. Below the shield, cut in Roman lettering, runs the motto TURRUS FORTIS MIHI DEUS, a phrase that translates as "To me God is a brave tower." The Grace family were an established Hiberno-Norman dynasty in Kilkenny and Tipperary, and the lion rampant was a long-standing element of their heraldry. The Kelly connection would have represented one of the many inter-family arrangements that defined landed society in the region during that period.