Dated 1622 and inscribed with raised Latin letters, the slab carries a lengthy verse epitaph for someone named Gouldsworth, lamenting the passing of a person whose eloquence, fortune, beauty, and virtue are said to lie together in a small ancestral grave. Between the lines of text, carvings were cut into the stone; among them, scholars have made out a church window and a dog pursuing a stag. Eight letters arranged in the upper left-hand corner, reading A.F.I.B. and F.F.I.L., have never been satisfactorily explained.

The inscription, rendered in relief rather than incised, was described in detail by the Reverend Seymour, writing between 1907 and 1909, who noted the stone's position just outside the communion rails of what he called the modern church. The Urban Survey of Limerick, compiled by Bradley and others in 1989, drew on Seymour's account but recorded the slab as "not seen," suggesting it may have been obscured or covered by that point. An earlier survey from November 1942, conducted as part of the Irish Tourist Association's recording work, described the slab as a huge stone with rude carvings of birds and animals in addition to the Latin text, a detail that differs slightly from Seymour's more specific identification of a church window and a hunting scene. Whether those carvings were always there and simply catalogued differently by each observer, or whether different portions of the stone were visible at different times, is not clear from the surviving records.

Knockainy is a small rural townland in County Limerick, and St. John's Church sits within a graveyard that also contains other recorded monuments. The slab itself is described as set into the chancel floor, near the communion table in the Protestant church building. Anyone hoping to examine it closely should be aware that access to church interiors in rural Ireland can be irregular, and that the slab's current condition and visibility have not been confirmed in recent survey records. The carved figures, particularly the dog and stag, are said to lie between the fourth and fifth lines of the inscription, so a careful reading of the Latin, even partially, would help locate them. The epitaph ends by addressing the deceased's children, asking why they weep when their mother, in giving them to the earth, also gave their deeds to heaven.