It is extensively cracked, its surface fractured across the inscription in a way that makes reading it feel like a small act of reconstruction. But the words are still there, and they carry with them the compressed grief of a seventeenth-century Dublin merchant family, preserved in spelling that has not been smoothed into modern English.

The stone was erected by Oliver Barnewall of Dublin, described in the inscription as a "Marchant", for himself, his wife Mary Galtrim, and their children. The phrase "there children One who lies soules" suggests at least one child had already died by the time the stone was commissioned, the archaic spelling lending the loss an additional rawness. Oliver Barnewall himself died on the 3rd of September 1690, a date that places him in a Dublin still reverberating from the Williamite Wars; the Battle of the Boyne had been fought just weeks earlier, in July of that year. The Barnewall name was a significant one in the Pale, the area of English-controlled Ireland centred on Dublin, and merchant families of that name appear across the historical record of the period. The stone closes with a direct appeal, "Oure Lord God, Have Mercie Amen", a formula common to Catholic memorial stones of the era.

The stone is recumbent, meaning it lies horizontally rather than standing upright, and is situated in the chancel, the area of a church nearest the altar, typically reserved for clergy and, in earlier periods, for those wealthy or prominent enough to secure burial within the building itself. The cracking is extensive and visitors should not expect a clean read; patience and good light will help. The chapel at Burrow in County Dublin is not a major visitor attraction, so the approach is likely to be quiet. Those with an interest in early modern funerary inscription, or in the material culture of Dublin's merchant class in the late seventeenth century, will find the stone rewards close attention.