On the south face, the text is cut in false relief within a recessed, well-dressed border; on the north, the surface is flat and the letters stand proud. It is an unusual doubling, as though the mason, or the man who commissioned him, wanted the record to be legible regardless of which direction a person happened to be passing.

The inscription itself is straightforward enough once rendered from the Latin: Robert Jose, known also as Joyse, procurator to the Chapter of St Canice's, built this gate and these steps at the expense of the Church in the year 1614. The procurator was an administrative officer responsible for the financial and practical affairs of a cathedral chapter, the body of clergy attached to a cathedral, which gives the wording a slightly official character, as if Jose were logging the expenditure for the record as much as claiming personal credit. The archway and steps he funded connect Velvet Lane to St Canice's Cathedral, providing a defined passage that has remained in use for over four centuries. The scholar J. G. A. Prim transcribed the inscription in 1862, and his reading has been the basis for understanding the plaque since.