It is a composite monument, meaning its surviving carved panels, plaque, and slab have been gathered and fitted back together, not necessarily in their original configuration. The reassembly, carried out between 1967 and 1969, was openly acknowledged at the time as speculative. What visitors see today is, in other words, a considered reconstruction rather than an intact original, which lends the whole object an unusual, quietly provisional quality.

The tomb was originally erected in the White Mortuary Chapel attached to St Mary's Church in Clonmel. It commemorates Nicholas White, Esquire, who died on the 30th of August 1622. His widow Barbara and their son Henry, described in the Latin inscription as his son and heir, commissioned the chapel and monument as a perpetual memorial, dedicating it to the Holy Name of Jesus and to the Blessed Virgin Mary. When that mortuary chapel was demolished in 1805, the components were transferred to St Patrick's Well. The southern face of the tomb carries three carved panels set within arched frames: a central Crucifixion scene showing the Virgin Mary and St John flanking the cross, with the buildings of Old Jerusalem visible behind and the sun and moon to either side; a panel to the left depicting John the Baptist standing in water holding a cross-headed staff, though some scholars have read this instead as a Resurrection scene; and a panel to the right showing the enthroned Virgin and Child. Roses fill the spandrels, the triangular spaces between the arches, on either side of the central panel. The western face carries a heraldic memorial plaque dated 10 May 1623, bearing the White coat of arms, a chevron engrailed between three roses, above a skull and crossbones and the inscription "Memento Mori". The northern face is inscribed in Latin with the full commemorative text, which records not only Nicholas White's death but also the formal translation of his body to the monument on the 22nd of December 1623. The top slab, two metres long, is thought to be original; it is moulded on one side only, suggesting it once sat flush against a chapel wall.