Set into the outer west wall of a modern church building in Abbeyside, on the Waterford side of Dungarvan harbour, a small limestone panel quietly carries imagery that has nothing to do with the building it now adorns. Roughly half a metre wide and slightly taller than it is broad, the carved stone bears a heraldic shield in relief, populated by what appears to be a gryphon, the part-eagle, part-lion creature familiar from medieval and early modern coats of arms, alongside three scallop shells. It is the kind of object that rewards a second look from anyone who happens to pass along the western face of the church.

The panel is thought to date from the seventeenth century, and its current setting is not its original one. It now sits within the fabric of the modern church attached to an Augustinian priory, a religious house whose history in this area stretches back considerably further. Augustinian friaries were established across Ireland from the thirteenth century onward, and Abbeyside, whose very name preserves the memory of the community that once lived there, was one such foundation. Armorial panels of this type were typically commissioned to record patronage or ownership, the scallop shell in particular being a charge associated with several Anglo-Norman and Old English families active in Munster during the period. Without a clearer identification of the arms, the precise family or individual commemorated here remains uncertain, but the carving's survival through centuries of alteration and rebuilding is notable in itself.