It is not a plaque in any commemorative sense but an achievement of arms, the full heraldic display of shield, crest, mantling, and motto that announced who built a place and, by extension, who they were. At roughly 72 centimetres tall and 67 centimetres wide, carved in false relief and set within a moulded square frame, it rewards anyone who stops long enough to read it.

The shield is divided per pale, meaning split vertically down the centre. The right-hand side carries the arms of the Everard family: an ermine field, that is, a background patterned to suggest white fur with black tips, beneath a horizontal band charged with two mullets, or five-pointed stars. The left-hand side belongs to the Roches, represented by three roaches naiant, small fish shown swimming horizontally across the field. Together the two halves record a union between families rather than a single lineage. The initials cut into a recessed panel at the lower edge of the frame confirm it: I E and A R, for John Everard and Amy Roche. Above the shield sits a helmet and wreath, and above that a crest depicting a pelican wounding her own breast to feed her three chicks with her blood, a long-standing symbol of self-sacrifice. Here the wreath doubles as the nest. The mantling, the decorative cloth that flows from the helmet, is carved into two large, multi-lobed billows on either side, each finishing in a heavy tassel. A scroll across the bottom carries the motto VIRTUS IN ACTIONE CONSISTAT, virtue consists in action.

The almshouse to which the plaque belongs stands in the medieval walled town of Fethard, and the carving sits towards the western end of its front façade. It is visible from the street, which means the heraldry, the fish, the self-wounding pelican, and the quietly purposeful motto have been there for anyone to notice for the better part of four centuries.