In the rectangular graveyard of a ruined church above the Blackwater River's floodplain, a single headstone stands out from its surroundings by several centuries. Marking the burial of one Richard Norris, it carries an incised Roman-letter inscription dated 1629, making it a notably early example of a named, dated grave marker in this part of County Waterford. At just over a metre in height and roughly 80 centimetres across, it is not a grand monument, but its legibility and age give it a quiet weight.

The church at Mocollop sits on a rise above the east-west corridor of the Blackwater, a river valley that served as one of the main routes into Munster throughout the medieval and early modern periods. The Reverend P. Power, writing in the Waterford Archaeological Journal in 1898, recorded the stone and its inscription, placing it within a broader survey of the county's ruined churches. By 1629, the Reformation had long complicated the relationship between church buildings, burial rites, and the communities that used both, which makes it all the more striking that someone thought it worthwhile to commission a formal inscribed headstone in what appears to have been a continuing place of burial. The identity of Richard Norris beyond his name and death year has not been recorded, but the care taken with the lettering suggests a family of some local standing.