The problem is that nobody is quite sure where it stands any more. The precise location of this seventeenth-century memorial, commissioned by a senior member of the O'Mulryan family, has not been identified within the graveyard, making it one of those curious objects that is simultaneously documented and lost.

What we know of the monument comes largely from two antiquarian sources separated by more than two centuries. In 1681, the traveller and draughtsman Thomas Dineley recorded both a drawing and a Latin inscription, which translates roughly as a declaration by one William Brian, or Mulryan, that he had caused this burial monument to be erected for himself, his wife, and his children, styling himself head and prince of the ancient Mulryan family and of the territory of Owney. By the early twentieth century, the antiquarian T. J. Westropp was able to place it more precisely, noting that the monument was to the right of the altar of the abbatial church, with another memorial to the left as one approached. A wall monument of this type, sometimes called a mural monument, is essentially a commemorative tablet or sculpted panel fixed directly to a church wall rather than set flat in the floor, combining inscription, heraldry, and sometimes figurative carving in a single composition. The stone used for these memorials at Abington has long been described locally as marble, though the researcher Rolf Loeber suggested it was more likely cut limestone from quarries in the barony of Clanwilliam. The Civil Survey of 1654 to 1656 records a quarry at Caherline and Ballyhobin that may have supplied the material.

Abby Owney itself is a medieval monastic site, and its graveyard remains an active and layered place, with remains from several centuries in close proximity. Anyone visiting to look for the Mulryan monument should be prepared for the possibility of not finding it in any obvious sense; the satisfaction here lies as much in the search and the context as in any clear identification. The Westropp account offers the most useful spatial clue, orienting the monument relative to the altar, though what survives and what is legible after nearly four centuries of weathering and disturbance is another matter entirely.