One depicts a pelican in piety, a heraldic image in which the bird pierces its own breast to feed its young with its blood, long used as a symbol of self-sacrifice and Christian redemption. The other shows a seven-headed dragon. Together, they make for an unusual pairing on what is, on the surface, a fairly ordinary piece of funerary architecture.

The vault belongs to the Sexten family, and both plaques are recorded in the Urban Survey of Limerick, compiled by Bradley and colleagues in 1989. The cathedral itself is the oldest surviving building in Limerick city, with origins in the twelfth century, and its graveyard accumulated monuments across many centuries of use. The Sexten vault sits within that graveyard as a separate structure, and the two carvings on it appear to draw on a symbolic vocabulary common to late medieval and early modern heraldry and religious iconography. The seven-headed dragon, in particular, carries echoes of the Book of Revelation, though whether the Sexten family intended a specifically theological reading or simply favoured dramatic imagery is not recorded. What is clear is that somebody thought these two images, so different in mood, belonged together on the same structure.

St. Mary's Cathedral is located on Bridge Street and remains an active Church of Ireland parish church, which means the building and graveyard are generally accessible during opening hours. The vault itself is in the churchyard rather than inside the cathedral, so the plaques can be examined from outside. They are modest in size and easy to overlook among the other monuments, so it is worth moving slowly and looking at the stonework directly rather than from a distance. The pelican and dragon are carved in relief, and their condition, like much outdoor stonework, depends on the weather and the angle of the light; overcast days sometimes bring out the detail more clearly than bright sun.