Cut into Roman capitals and set into the limestone, it opens with a declaration in Latin that translates, roughly, as: "Behold Death standing in front of the portals of the World! If you seek honours, repent your crimes. I entreat you to pray for me." It is a striking thing to find chiselled into a family monument, equal parts piety, self-awareness, and unsettling directness.

The tomb was built in 1688 by Donogh O'Kerine, son of Dermot O'Kerine of Owan, who had both the chapel and the chest tomb erected for himself and his descendants. A chest tomb is essentially a box-shaped grave monument, here constructed from large limestone blocks, with a plaque mounted above carrying the bilingual inscription, first in English and then in the Latin verses. The English portion is straightforward, recording the patron's name, lineage, and purpose in the plain legal language of the era. The Latin that follows it is something else entirely; rather than praise the deceased, it addresses the living directly, pressing them to acknowledge mortality and pray for the man interred below. The combination of a vernacular dedication and a philosophically charged Latin epitaph in a single monument is relatively unusual and suggests someone, whether O'Kerine himself or whoever composed the inscription, who was thinking carefully about what a tomb was actually for. Westropp noted the monument in the early twentieth century, and it has been recorded and discussed by subsequent researchers of Clare's burial heritage.