It commemorates Stephen and Joan Seagrave and their children, who died in 1597, and it is built from an unlikely combination of plaster and wooden frame, materials that have no business lasting four centuries but somehow have. What makes it stranger still is the company it keeps: at its base, a winged skull and crossbones sits alongside swags of drapery, leaves, and globes, a mixture of mortality symbolism and decorative abundance that was entirely typical of late sixteenth-century funerary taste, yet feels incongruous the moment you actually stand in front of it.

The monument is housed in St Audeon's Church on High Street, the only surviving medieval parish church in Dublin, a building whose origins stretch back to the twelfth century. The Seagraves were a Dublin family, and their memorial follows the conventions of Elizabethan wall monuments with considerable care. Above the apron and its memento mori imagery, a sarcophagus carries three consoles, stone-like brackets used to support a horizontal element, from which rise five kneeling figures arranged in the period fashion of a family at prayer. To the left, a man kneels at a prie-dieu, a small prayer desk, with his son positioned behind him. To the right, a woman kneels in the same posture, her two daughters ranged behind her. Flanking these figures are composite columns, a classical order combining Ionic scrolls with Corinthian foliage, and the central column carries a basket of fruits. Above the figures, a frieze bears two angels' heads, and the whole structure is crowned by a triangular pediment decorated with roses and a form of bead and reel scrollwork, a repeating classical ornamental pattern. Three heraldic shields are attached to the pediment, and the monument measures 3.75 metres high and 1.62 metres wide.

St Audeon's sits just off High Street near the old city walls, and the church operates as a heritage site managed by the Office of Public Works, so opening hours vary by season and it is worth checking in advance. The monument is inside the medieval nave, and because the interior is not large, the Seagrave memorial is immediately visible rather than tucked away. It is the kind of object that rewards a second look, particularly the lower section, where the skull and crossbones beneath the swags of drapery makes an odd but deliberate pairing with the fruits and flowers above.