The stone bears the date 1675, and beneath it the letters ILE, with the L raised slightly above the other two. It is not a foundation stone, not a grave marker in situ, not an original feature of the house at all. It is, in a quiet way, a transplant, given a new home in a wall where it was never meant to be.

The house in question is Clonard Castle, built around 1863 by a man named James S. Loughnan. Writing in 1883, a commentator named Holahan recorded that the slab had been brought from Kilkenny city and incorporated into the wall during construction, described at the time as a nicely-wrought piece of work. What the inscription originally marked, and where exactly in Kilkenny it came from, is not recorded. The letters ILE offer a partial clue, possibly initials or an abbreviated word, but no fuller explanation survives. The slightly raised L is a small peculiarity that suggests care in the original carving, a craftsman attending to detail, though for whose benefit or commemoration remains unclear. Stones of this kind were often reset into later buildings during the nineteenth century, sometimes out of antiquarian enthusiasm, sometimes simply because a good piece of dressed stone was considered too useful or too handsome to leave behind.