What makes it worth pausing over is the combination of its form and its material: a chest tomb, the kind of raised rectangular monument designed to suggest a coffin or altar, set against the wall with an elaborate mural entablature above it, the architectural framing of columns, cornices, and decorative panels that would have signalled wealth and social standing to anyone who entered the chancel. A coat of arms occupies part of this upper section, and the inscription, composed in Latin, names the two people it commemorates: Robert Frayne and his wife Eleonora FitzGerald.

The date of 1643 places this monument in a particularly turbulent moment in Irish history, just as the Confederate Ireland period was reshaping political and religious allegiances across the country. The families named here, the Fraynes and the FitzGeralds, were part of the Old English Catholic community whose fortunes were shifting considerably during this period. The choice of black marble for the monument and the formality of a Latin inscription suggest that whoever commissioned it was keen to project a certain permanence and prestige, even as the world outside was far from stable. The monument has been noted by William Carrigan in his 1905 history of the diocese and more recently by Paul Cockerham in his 2009 work on commemorative monuments, placing it within a broader tradition of elaborate funerary commemoration found in Irish churches of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.