It is a mural monument, meaning it is fixed to the wall rather than lying flat as a floor slab, and it commemorates a man and his wife in a mixture of carved imagery and Latin verse that still rewards close reading despite centuries of weathering. What makes it particularly arresting is the survival of a near-contemporary record of how it looked: in 1681, the traveller and antiquary Thomas Dineley sketched it and noted its position precisely, writing that it could be seen "on the right hand going up to the Altar place of ye Chancel of Carigkenlish."

The monument was erected by Theobald Bourke for himself and his wife Slaney Brien, whose names appear in the Latin inscription: "Theobaldus Bourk sibi et uxori suae Slanie Brien fieri fecit," meaning roughly that Theobald Bourke had this tomb made for himself and his wife. The inscription continues with lines invoking the Bourke and Brien lineages, both families of considerable standing in Munster. The monument measures approximately 1.35 by 1.46 metres and is arranged in two sections. The lower panel is flanked by pilasters with architectural decoration in false relief, a common feature of post-Reformation memorial carving in Ireland where columns and mouldings are rendered as shallow surface ornament rather than fully three-dimensional forms. Above this, an upper panel depicts the Crucifixion at its centre, with figures of the Virgin Mary and Saint John to either side and the symbols of the Passion incised beside the figure of Christ. Dineley's sketch, now held in the National Library of Ireland, shows the monument in greater detail still: three round-arched niches, a skull and crossbones below Christ, a ladder to the left, and decorative columns topped with ball finials, the central one inscribed with the letters IHS.

The church ruins at Caherconlish are accessible to visitors, and the monument sits within the roofless chancel, the eastern arm of the building where the altar would originally have stood. The Latin inscription, though partially damaged and difficult to read in full, is still largely present, and Dineley's sketch provides a useful reference for making sense of what remains. The carving rewards patient attention; the upper panel in particular, with its compressed narrative of the Passion, is worth examining slowly. Those with an interest in post-medieval commemorative culture will find this a genuinely informative example of how Catholic gentry families in seventeenth-century Ireland chose to mark their deaths, drawing on both classical and devotional visual traditions within a single, modestly sized limestone panel.