This one, associated with the townland of Enniscoush in County Limerick, marks the resting place of a man named John Hayward and carries an inscription that begins with the kind of blunt formality common to seventeenth-century funerary stonework: "1638 HEREUNDER LIETH THE BODY OF JOHN HAYWARD, WHO DECEASED .. OF FEBRUARY." The day of the month is now lost, worn or damaged beyond recovery, which gives the record an oddly incomplete quality, as though the stone itself has forgotten the ending of the story it was meant to preserve.

The slab was recorded by the Urban Survey of Limerick, which noted its position in the centre aisle of the church at Rathkeale. The survey entry, compiled by Denis Power and later revised by Caimin O'Brien, draws on an earlier source, the Memorials of the Dead volume from 1913 to 1916, suggesting that antiquarians had already noted the stone in the early twentieth century. Beyond the name and year 1638, the historical record offers little about who John Hayward was, though the period places him in a County Limerick that was still absorbing the aftershocks of the Munster Plantation, the late sixteenth-century scheme that had resettled much of the province with English and Scottish colonists. A surname like Hayward fits comfortably within that settler community, though the notes do not confirm this directly.

Rathkeale is a market town in west County Limerick, straightforward enough to reach by road. The church associated with the slab is the focus for anyone wishing to seek out the stone, which the survey places specifically in the centre of the aisle rather than along a wall or in a side chapel. Floor slabs of this kind, graveslab being the general term for a flat memorial stone either flush with or slightly raised from the ground, are often scuffed and faded from foot traffic over generations, so close attention at ground level is worthwhile. The partial date, with its missing day, is worth reading in full once you find it.