On the southern wall of St. David's Church in Naas, a small limestone slab sits quietly against the stonework, easy to pass without a second glance. It measures just over half a metre square and less than a tenth of a metre thick, modest dimensions for something that has endured since the close of the seventeenth century. What makes it worth pausing over is the lettering: an inscription carved in false relief Roman lettering, a technique in which the letters appear raised from the surface but are actually formed by cutting away the surrounding stone to create that impression of elevation.

The slab commemorates a Thomas Moore, dated 1699, placing it in the final year of a century that had been particularly turbulent for Kildare and for Ireland more broadly. Beyond the name, the date, and the material, the record is spare. We do not know Moore's station, his family connections, or why this particular form of memorial was chosen for him. What can be said is that the choice of limestone and the relatively restrained format were both common to funerary monuments of the period in Leinster, where wall-set slabs served as a more durable alternative to free-standing grave markers.