That is how ogham stones, which carry inscriptions in a script made up of notches and strokes cut along a central stem line, often survived: repurposed as building material, their original funerary or commemorative function long forgotten by those who lifted them. This particular example was discovered by the antiquarian John Windele, built into a low wall inside the cathedral at Ardmore, Co. Waterford, and it has since travelled considerably further from where it began.

Windele's discovery was recorded in FitzGerald's work of 1854 to 1855, and the stone was later catalogued by R.A.S. Macalister in 1945 as number 264 in his monumental corpus of Irish ogham inscriptions. Broken at both ends, the stone measures 0.86 metres long, 0.30 metres wide, and just 0.05 metres thick, and the surviving fragment of its inscription reads only ...]NACI MAQI[..., a partial formula that almost certainly once named a person as the son, or descendant, of another, since MAQI is the ogham genitive of the word for son. Ardmore itself was already remarkable for ogham: two further inscribed stones were found there, one built into the east wall of St Declan's Oratory and a third, also bearing a cross, found beside a grave. All three originated in the same early Christian site, yet this stone ended up in Dublin rather than remaining with the others, which are still displayed in the cathedral.

The stone is now held in Dublin South City, though the notes do not specify a precise public location within that area. For those wishing to examine the inscription in detail without travelling, the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies has made the stone part of its Ogham in 3D project, run through the School of Celtic Studies, which provides digital scans and full epigraphic records accessible online. Anyone with a serious interest in the text will find the partial formula more legible through those three-dimensional renderings than through any photograph, since the shallow cuts of ogham are notoriously difficult to read under flat light.