It is an arresting thing to encounter in a domestic setting, and the questions it raises are more interesting than any answers currently on offer.

The slab, which measures roughly 82 centimetres wide and 80 centimetres tall, now sits at Durham Lodge, though local tradition holds that it was originally brought from Hollywell House, about 700 metres to the north, where it was associated with a family called Sandys, who had been in Ireland since the late seventeenth century. The stone itself, however, appears considerably older than the Sandys connection would suggest. A raised letter 'R' survives in the top right corner, and the top left corner has been broken away; if that missing corner once bore an 'E', the combination would point to a late sixteenth-century date, most plausibly the reign of Elizabeth I. On that reading, the plaque may have nothing to do with the Sandys family at all, and instead could be a fragment from the refurbishment of Roscommon Castle carried out by Sir Nicholas Malby, who served as President of Connacht in the 1570s and 1580s and undertook significant works at the castle. Royal heraldic stonework of this kind would have been entirely appropriate for a newly consolidated seat of English provincial authority, and pieces from such buildings were frequently dispersed, reused, or built into later structures as their original settings fell into ruin or changed hands. Whether the Sandys acquired it knowingly as a piece of architectural salvage, or simply inherited it along with the property, is not recorded.