Its lower section has disappeared into the earth, and the carved decoration, a banded seven-armed cross with fleur-de-lis terminals, has faded considerably into the surface of the stone. What remains visible measures just over a metre in height, and around its border runs an inscription in Roman lettering that breaks off mid-word: HERE LYES CHRISTOPHER NUGENT 1 BA.......Y OF APRILL IN THE YEARE 1672. The gap where the text fails is partly a matter of weathering and partly a matter of burial; whatever the lower portion of the slab once said, it is no longer accessible.

The inscription is intriguing precisely because of what a nineteenth-century antiquarian thought he could still read. When Brennan transcribed the slab in 1862 or 1863, he rendered the name in full as Charles Christopher Nugent, 1st Baron of Delvin, and supplied a complete date, the 15th of April 1672. Whether Brennan was reading from a text that was then clearer than it is now, or whether he supplemented what he saw with knowledge of the Nugent family, is not entirely clear; a sketch he made of the slab does not accurately represent the layout of the inscription as it actually appears on the stone. The Barons of Delvin were a branch of the Nugent family long associated with the midlands of Ireland, and the presence of such a slab in Fethard points to burial practices that could carry aristocratic remains considerable distances to favoured religious houses.