They ask, in plain and slightly irregular English, that anyone who passes by should pray for three named people. The panels are survivors: when the old bridge at this crossing was demolished in the late 1960s, these stones were lifted from the rubble and reset into the new structure, which is about as utilitarian a home as a piece of late Tudor heraldry could find.

The larger of the two pieces is an armorial plaque, measuring roughly 55 centimetres high by 84 centimetres wide, bearing two heraldic shields. An armorial plaque of this kind would typically have been set into a bridge or gateway to record the patronage of whoever paid for its construction, functioning as a permanent carved credit. The shields here belong to Sir John Bellew, also recorded as Bedlow, and his third wife Ismay Nugent, who had previously been married to Thomas Casey of Athboy. The couple lived at Castletown in County Louth, which makes the bridge at Ballynacor something of a long-distance act of public piety. The first shield combines the arms of Bellew and Nugent; the second pairs the arms of Casey and Nugent, acknowledging Ismay's earlier marriage. Beneath the coats of arms runs a Latin inscription dated 1586, reading DNS PUIDEBIT IN DNO CONFIDO, a phrase drawing on the Psalms and meaning roughly "the Lord will provide; I trust in the Lord." The second, narrower stone carries an English inscription dated 1584, identifying the arms and recording that Sir John and Dame Ismay, with Ismay named also as former wife to Thomas Casey of Athboy, "maed this bridg" in that year. The slightly phonetic spelling and the deliberate inclusion of all three individuals, two husbands and the woman who connected them, gives the inscription a quality that formal heraldic carving rarely achieves: something closer to an ordinary human request than a declaration of rank.