The stone was already described as "much mutilated" when Ordnance Survey correspondents noted it in the nineteenth century, and when a rubbing was taken in the early twentieth century, both the upper and lower portions were already missing. What remained was fragmentary enough to require guesswork, yet distinctive enough to copy down carefully. It is the kind of object that insists on being recorded even as it gradually disappears.

The slab commemorates Joannes Shea Generosus, that is, a gentleman of the name Shea, and his wife Elisia. The date is partially legible, reading only "16.." before the numerals give out, placing the stone somewhere in the 1600s. The inscription ran lengthways along the slab, parallel to the shaft of a carved cross, and included a verse epitaph in Latin that was a recognised formula on memorial stones of the period: "Quisquis eris qui transieris, sta, perlege, plora. Sum quod eris, fueramque quod es, pro me precor, ora," meaning roughly, whoever you are who passes by, stop, read, and weep; I am what you will be, and I was once what you are; I pray you, pray for me. The appeal is addressed directly to the living from the dead, a form of address that turns the act of reading into a small act of intercession. Three heraldic shields accompanied the inscription, the lowest of which appears to carry a chevron between three pheons, a pheon being an arrowhead-shaped charge used in heraldry, with the points facing upward. Whether the coat of arms belonged to the Shea family or to a connected family through marriage is not clear from what survives.

When the site was inspected by surveyors, the slab could not be located. It may have been moved, incorporated into flooring or walling, or simply lost beneath accumulated debris. The rubbing taken by FitzGerald in the early twentieth century and the Ordnance Survey description recorded by O'Flanagan remain the most complete evidence that it ever existed at all.