I had been what thou art. Pray for me I entreat thee." It is one of those medieval texts that manages to feel personal across five centuries, and the tomb that bears it is stranger and more layered than it first appears, being assembled, at least in part, from the stonework of more than one monument.

The recumbent slab, measuring just under 1.8 metres in length, is carved in relief with a seven-armed floriated cross rising from a curving Calvary mount, with fleur-de-lys ornament and foliate patterns filling the upper corners. Running within the margin is a Latin inscription in black-letter script commemorating William Cantwell, lord of Ballytobur and Cloghecordly, and his wife Margaret Butler, who died on the 21st of November 1528. The year of William's own death is unfortunately lost in the stone. The inscription promises 120 days of indulgence to anyone who pauses to say a Pater and Ave for their souls, and it is candid about its own purpose: the stone is placed not to ornament the body, it states, but to keep the soul in memory. The front face of the tomb is divided into decorated niches with window tracery and foliage motifs separated by carved pilasters. But the west end panel is the most arresting detail, and almost certainly does not belong to this tomb at all. Attributed by the art historian John Hunt to the O'Tunney workshop and dated to the latter half of the sixteenth century, it shows three saints in semi-circular niches separated by twisted columns: St James Major with his pilgrim's hat and scallop-shell, St Andrew with a large saltire cross, and St Peter holding two keys. The O'Tunney family were a dynasty of Kilkenny stone-carvers whose work appears at several Cistercian and Ormond-connected sites across the region, and the presence of their craft here, on what appears to be a repurposed panel, suggests the tomb was at some point rearranged or augmented from another source entirely.

Kilcooly Abbey is a Cistercian foundation and its ruins are accessible to visitors, with the chancel and its carved details remaining in reasonable condition. The tomb sits beneath the piscina credence, a small recess in the chancel wall originally used to hold liturgical vessels, which gives some sense of the ritual geography that once surrounded it.