Set into a niche in the north wall of a church in Palmerstown, a limestone graveslab stands just over one and a half metres tall, quietly detailed and easy to walk past without registering what it contains. What makes it worth pausing over is the carving: an eight-pointed cross with terminals that mix the floriated, leaf-like forms common in medieval stonework with sharper, pointed ends, all raised on a stepped base, and flanked by two heraldic shields in relief. The combination of decorative cross and armorial imagery on a single slab points to someone of consequence, or at least someone with connections to families who took their genealogy seriously.

The stone is known as the Flatesbury Monument, and it is thought to commemorate, or possibly celebrate, the marriage of Eleanor Wogan and James Flatesbury in 1564. The Wogans and Flatesburys were both Anglo-Norman settler families with deep roots in the Pale, that area of medieval Ireland around Dublin within which English rule was most firmly established. The pairing of two heraldic shields on a funerary or commemorative slab was a conventional way of recording a dynastic union, each shield representing one of the families joined by the match. Whether the slab was made close to 1564 or somewhat later is not entirely clear, but the carved detail suggests a craftsman familiar with the decorative vocabulary of the period.