In the south-east corner of Dunfierth Church in County Kildare, there was once a chest tomb dated 1613, the kind of low rectangular stone box, sometimes called a box tomb, that was a common way of marking a burial in post-medieval Ireland. By the time anyone thought to write it down properly, it was already falling apart.

The record comes from Fitzgerald, writing between 1891 and 1895, who described it simply as a plain box tomb, now badly broken. That matter-of-fact phrasing suggests a monument already far gone by the late nineteenth century, with no inscription or ornament apparently legible enough to be worth noting. The date of 1613 would place its origin in the early years of the seventeenth century, a period when the established Church of Ireland was consolidating its presence in parishes across Kildare, and when chest tombs of this kind were beginning to appear with some regularity in churchyard settings across the country. Whether Fitzgerald was able to read that date from the stone itself or drew it from an earlier source is not recorded. At some point after his visit, the tomb disappeared entirely, leaving no physical trace in the churchyard.