The stone dates to the seventeenth century, and whatever name or epitaph was once cut into its surface is now gone, leaving only the bare slab in a landscape that has quietly accumulated layers of history around it. It is the kind of object that rewards attention precisely because so little of it survives.

The slab sits within the graveyard of a medieval church, immediately to the south of the Church of Ireland building that now occupies the site. According to a nineteenth-century source, the stone may mark the grave of Lieutenant Humphrey Minchin of Shangarry, one of Cromwell's officers. If that identification is correct, the slab carries considerable weight. Cromwell's campaign in Ireland between 1649 and 1653 was among the most violent episodes in the island's history, and the officers who served in it were often rewarded with confiscated Irish land, settling into the landscape as new proprietors after the wars. Minchin of Shangarry would have been one such figure, and a graveslab, even a worn and anonymous one, would have been a mark of some local standing in the decades that followed. The attribution comes from a record dating to 1892, and the word "may" does real work here; the inscription that might have confirmed the identification is long gone.