One slab commemorates John Fitzsimon, who died in 1709, while another, older still, honours Patrick Barnewall of Staffordstown and his wife Begnot de La Hoyde, who died in 1592. What makes this latter monument worth pausing over is its preservation of two coats of arms alongside a carved inscription, a combination that speaks to a particular tradition of heraldic commemoration that was already old-fashioned by the time the Fitzsimon slab was cut.

The Barnewall family were a prominent Anglo-Norman dynasty with deep roots in the Fingal area of north County Dublin, and the name Staffordstown connects Patrick to a specific local landholding. His wife's surname, de La Hoyde, has a distinctly Norman-French character, a reminder that the families of the Pale still carried the linguistic traces of their medieval origins well into the sixteenth century. The pairing of two coats of arms on a single memorial slab was a common way of recording an alliance between families through marriage, with the husband's and wife's heraldic devices displayed side by side. The monument's survival into the present, recorded in Healy's 1975 survey of the area, suggests it was at some point moved or consolidated into the church porch, hence its current description as a monument in its present location rather than in its original setting.

The church porch at Donabate is accessible to visitors, and the graveslabs are visible there rather than inside the main body of the building. The porch setting means the stonework is exposed to the elements to some degree, so the clarity of the carving varies depending on light conditions. Anyone with an interest in heraldry or post-medieval memorial culture will find the Barnewall slab particularly worth examining closely; the inscription and arms together offer a small but legible record of two families whose names were woven into the fabric of Fingal for generations.