A chest tomb is essentially a box-shaped grave monument, with a flat top slab, known as a mensa, and decorated panels on the sides. This one, carved from fossiliferous limestone, has its front panel filled with the instruments of the Passion, the physical objects associated with the arrest, torture, and crucifixion of Christ. Arranged either side of a central Latin cross, they include the bag that held the thirty pieces of silver, the scourging pillar, the crown of thorns, the dice thrown by soldiers, the ladder used to take down the body, and the cup of vinegar raised on a pole. It is an unusually full inventory, rendered in false-relief with considerable care.

The tomb commemorates William Shee, who died on the 28th of April 1584, and his wife Margaret Walsh, whose date of death was never filled in, leaving that part of the Latin inscription permanently blank. Shee had been both a burgess and sovereign, that is, the chief civic officer, of Kilkenny. The mensa carries a seven-armed cross flanked by streamers, and the inscription runs around its margin in blackletter script. The north side-panel depicts a six-light reticulated church window, a carved representation of the kind of Gothic tracery common in medieval ecclesiastical architecture. The south side-panel bears the heraldic arms of the Shee and Walsh families, along with the initials W.K., which identify the sculptor as Walter Kerin. The tomb was vandalised in the early 2000s and subsequently rebuilt and conserved in 2014.