Dated 1641, it marks two members of the same family across different generations, and there is a possibility that it does more than mark them: it may actually cover a vault beneath the floor.

The slab commemorates Mary, wife of Walsingham Cooke, and her grandson Walsingham Parsons. The shared first name across grandmother and grandson, unusual enough to catch the eye, suggests a family that placed some weight on continuity of name as well as lineage. The 1641 date places the stone in a particularly turbulent moment in Irish history, the year the Ulster rebellion broke out and the island was drawn into a prolonged and brutal conflict. Whether the slab was laid in the immediate aftermath of a death that year or inscribed retrospectively is not recorded. The source for what is known about it is Philip Herbert Hore's exhaustive local history of Wexford, published in 1911, which preserves details of monuments that might otherwise have passed unnoticed entirely. A graveslab, for those unfamiliar with the form, is a flat stone laid horizontally over a grave or, as may be the case here, over a below-ground burial chamber or vault, sometimes incised with an inscription, a coat of arms, or a decorative border.