The slab itself is modest in size, just 0.68 metres wide and 0.64 metres tall, but the inscription carved into it in Roman capitals, in false relief, a technique where the letters are raised by cutting away the surrounding stone rather than incised into it, is unusually direct. Above the text sit the letters IHS, a Christogram derived from the Greek spelling of Jesus, and below them the words: "This chapel is built by Mor Hogan for a burial place for him and his posterity to whom God be merciful 1696."

The chapel to which the stone refers was added onto the southern face of Rath church, itself a medieval structure. It was commissioned in 1696 by a person named Mor Hogan, likely a member of a local family of some means, since constructing a private burial chapel attached to a parish church was a mark of social standing. The chapel is small, measuring approximately 4.4 by 4.68 metres externally, and today its interior is filled in up to the surviving wall height of about 1.1 metres. The slab now sits on top of this filled rubble, upright and still legible, while the underground chamber it once sealed at floor level remains accessible at ground beneath it. The phrasing of the inscription, asking God's mercy for Hogan and his "posterity", suggests the chamber was intended to serve generations rather than a single individual, a family vault rather than a personal monument.