Removed in the 1970s from the Walsh family burial chapel at Abington, they are objects slightly adrift from their original purpose, carrying a heraldic declaration that was carved to be read above a doorway, in a very specific place, by people who would have understood exactly what it meant.

The plaques are believed to be those that once framed the entrance to the mausoleum of Sir Edmond Walsh of Owney Abbey, who died in 1618. His wife was Alice Grace, and the inscription recorded above their arms, dated 1619, gave both their names in the formal idiom of the period: 'The Armes of Sr Edmond Walshe Knight, And hys Ladye Ellyce Grace.' The heraldry itself was detailed enough that the antiquarian Thomas Dineley was able to describe it precisely when he visited in 1681, noting a design of chevrons in gules, argent, and ermine, with three pheons (a pheon being an arrowhead shape used in heraldry), impaling a portcullis between three lions rampant, and a crest showing a swan sejant, meaning seated, atop a helmet. Dineley also recorded what remained of the chapel at Abington at that point, describing it as a small, unroofed structure at the west end of the abbey, with a monument of black marble inside. His account was later published in Shirley's 1865 edition of his travels.

Glenstal Abbey, a Benedictine monastery founded in the twentieth century, occupies a substantial estate in Murroe, and the plaques are held within its grounds. Access to the abbey grounds is possible, though visitors should be mindful that this is an active monastic community. The plaques are not a conventional visitor attraction, and anyone with a particular interest in the Walsh family heraldry or in early seventeenth-century funerary monuments in Munster would do well to make contact with the abbey in advance. The Abington mausoleum itself, now classified separately as an archaeological monument, remains at its original location, though without the plaques that once identified whose dead lay within.