Ogham is an early medieval script in which letters are represented by groups of notches and lines cut along the edge of a stone, and it was used primarily in Ireland and parts of Britain to record names and lineages. What makes this particular stone unusual is that it pairs an ogham inscription with one in Latin, a combination that is relatively common in Wales but exceptionally rare on this side of the Irish Sea.

The stone originally came from the 'Kileen Cormac' burial ground at Colbinstown, Co. Kildare, a site that yielded not one but seven ogham stones, recorded under the reference KD032-044----. This example, catalogued as KD032-044001-, measures 1.57 metres tall and 0.28 metres square in cross-section. Its ogham inscription reads OVANOS AVI IVACATTOS, while the Latin reads IVVEnRE DRVVIDES. These readings were established by R.A.S. Macalister, whose 1945 corpus of Irish ogham stones remains a foundational reference, and were further examined by Damian McManus in 1997. The stone has since been included in the 'Ogham in 3D' project run by the School of Celtic Studies at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, which has produced detailed digital records of ogham monuments across Ireland, accessible through the institute's online database.

Because the stone has been moved from its original Kildare context to a Dublin South City location, anyone wishing to see it in person should confirm its exact display address before visiting, as institutional collections can shift. The 'Ogham in 3D' database at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies is a practical first stop, offering high-resolution scans and full epigraphic detail for those who want to study the inscription closely before or instead of a visit. When examining the stone itself, look along the edges rather than the flat faces; ogham letters run vertically and are easy to miss if you are scanning the surface the way you would read a conventional inscription.