The house itself dates from the early eighteenth century, yet this carved plaque belongs to 1588, and nobody is entirely certain where it originally stood. It is the kind of object that raises more questions than it answers, a piece of heraldic stonework quietly embedded in a later structure, waiting for someone to look closely enough to notice it.

The slab carries a shield divided per pale, meaning split vertically into two halves. The right-hand side is divided again into quarters, while the left bears the arms of the Fitzpatricks of Upper Ossory: a saltire, which is a diagonal cross in the form of an X, beneath a horizontal band carrying three fleurs-de-lis. Carved in relief across the top of the slab is the abbreviated inscription "E. M. 15 88 G. F. M.", which the Kilkenny historian William Carrigan, writing in 1905, read as a commemorative pairing of Edmund, Lord Mountgarret, and Grainia Fitzpatrick, Lady Mountgarret, dated 1588. The marriage of those two names, one Butler and one Fitzpatrick, on a single heraldic slab reflects the dynastic alliances that shaped landownership across Leinster in the late sixteenth century. Carrigan himself acknowledged that the tablet's original location was unknown, though he noted the possibility that it came from Balleen Castle, a multi-period stronghold that served as a principal residence of the Mountgarret family. This 1588 plaque is one of three now set into the walls of Ballyconra House; the other two are eighteenth-century in date, including a lintel inscribed 1724 and a second armorial plaque dated 1735, suggesting successive owners had a habit of marking the building with carved stonework.