That combination of losses, the lost origin, the damaged text, the uncertain meaning, makes it an oddly compelling object. Ogham is an early medieval Irish writing system, typically carved as a series of notches and lines along the edge or face of a standing stone, and used primarily to record personal names. This particular stone, just over a metre tall and roughly thirty centimetres wide, is inscribed along one of its obtuse angles, which was a common enough convention, using the edge of the stone itself as a kind of spine for the letters.

The stone's history, as far as it can be traced, begins not at its original site but in a garden. For some years it stood at Parknasilla House, in the grounds associated with a family named Graves, before being presented to the National Museum of Ireland in 1931, where it was registered as accession number 1931:432. Where it stood before that, and where it was originally erected, is not recorded. The worn and damaged inscription was read by the scholar R. A. S. Macalister in 1945 as ANM VINNAGITLET, though he was not entirely confident in this reading, and the text trails off into uncertainty. The word ANM is an Old Irish formula meaning "name of", commonly found on ogham stones as a kind of introductory marker. The reading was subsequently confirmed by Damian McManus in 1991, though confirmation here means agreement on what the surviving letters appear to show, not resolution of what the complete inscription once said. One further detail worth noting: the letter E in the inscription is rendered using the X-forfid, a supplementary character added to the standard ogham alphabet, suggesting a degree of scribal elaboration.

The stone is held by the National Museum of Ireland, and anyone wishing to examine the inscription in detail without making a physical visit can consult the Ogham in 3D project, run by the School of Celtic Studies at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. That project has produced high-resolution three-dimensional models of ogham stones from across Ireland, and this stone, catalogued as CIIC 223, is among those included. The digital record is searchable at ogham.celt.dias.ie, and for a damaged inscription like this one, the ability to rotate and zoom a model often reveals more than a photograph, or even a careful look in a museum gallery, ever could.