The inscription, cut in gold Roman lettering into a black-painted limestone slab and framed in red marble with a marble pediment, tells the reader plainly that the man who erected it came from somewhere else entirely, and that he built it not for himself alone but for his family. That kind of self-conscious declaration, carved in stone nearly three and a half centuries ago, gives the memorial an oddly personal quality amid the formality of its materials.

The monument was raised in 1676 by Sir Thomas Southwell, a baronet who, as the inscription records, was descended from Barham Hall in Suffolk, England. The Southwells were among the planter families who established themselves in Munster during the seventeenth century, and the Rathkeale area became closely associated with their name. The memorial itself is substantial, measuring roughly 1.96 metres wide and 2.5 metres tall, and the Urban Survey of Limerick, which documented it in detail, noted references to it in published sources going back to the 1890s. The use of black limestone set against red marble, with incised and gilded lettering, reflects the formal funerary aesthetic of the period, when such wall memorials, sometimes called mural tablets, were a standard way for landed families to assert both piety and lineage in a parish church.

Holy Trinity church sits in Rathkeale town, which is straightforward enough to reach on the main road network in west Limerick. The church is a Church of Ireland building, and access to the interior is not always guaranteed on an unannounced visit, so it is worth making enquiries in advance if you are travelling specifically to see the memorial. Once inside, the inscription repays a slow read. The spelling follows seventeenth-century conventions, with V used in place of U throughout, so SOVTHWELL and FAMILLY appear where a modern eye might hesitate. The line breaks in the carved text cut across words mid-syllable, a reminder that the mason was working within the physical constraints of the stone rather than following the logic of the sentence.