A chest tomb, to clarify the form, was a raised box-shaped monument, with a decorated lid sitting atop a carved stone chest; when the chest itself is lost or removed, the lid is sometimes all that remains. This one measures just under two metres in length and not quite a metre across, and its surface carries a seven-armed segmental cross with fleur-de-lys terminals, a banded shaft, a three-bar knop beneath the cross head, and a stepped base. The carving is careful and unhurried.

The lid commemorates Peter Butler, lord of Bouncestown, who died on the last day of January 1575, and his wife Helen Grace. The inscription runs in raised Black Letter script, a formal Gothic lettering style associated with ecclesiastical and legal documents of the period, beginning at the upper right corner and continuing around the border of the stone. It opens with the standard medieval formula Hic Jacent, meaning "here lie", and names Peter Butler with the Latin title quondam dominus de Booncestowne. Helen Grace is named as his wife, but the date of her death was never completed, or has since been lost; the relevant portion of the inscription trails off into blanks. That unfinished passage gives the stone an odd, suspended quality, as though someone set down their chisel and never came back. The Butlers were one of the great Anglo-Norman dynasties of Kilkenny, and the Graces were a prominent local family of similar standing, so this monument sits at the intersection of two networks that shaped the county for centuries.