It is the geographical sweep of the inscriptions, as much as anything, that gives the monument its peculiar weight: a family with roots near Bristol, a son killed at Drogheda, a daughter-in-law who died in Spain, descendants fading out in English spa towns. The plaque itself, described by one 19th-century transcriber as a small headstone with a cross at the top and the inscription in very small incised letters, was formerly set within a recess in the church interior.

The monument was built to commemorate William Smyth, identified in the inscription as Esquire of Long Ashen near Bristol, who built the church and died on 24 April 1655 at the age of 65. His wife Mary Smyth, née Kinsman, followed him in May 1658. His son Laurence was killed at the Siege of Drogheda on 11 September 1649, aged 28, during the Cromwellian assault on that town, one of the most violent episodes of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Laurence's wife, Anna Maria Smyth, née Prebitzer, died at Bilbao in January 1676, suggesting the kind of continental displacement common among families caught on the wrong side of the Cromwellian settlement. Later transcriptions of the plaque extend the family record further: Laurence's son Valentine died at Bath in 1700; Valentine's wife Mary, née Bryan, in 1706; their son John in 1708; and John's wife Jane, née Read, as late as August 1747. The first line of the inscription also carries an unresolved detail: both 19th-century transcribers recorded the phrase "Eldest son of [uncut] Smyth Esqr.", suggesting that a name was never completed in the stone, leaving a deliberate or accidental blank at the very root of the family tree.

The plaque is one of two wall monuments that were formerly housed in recesses within the church interior. Whether either remains in situ within the now-roofless building is unclear from what has been recorded, but the inscription itself, preserved through multiple 19th- and early 20th-century transcriptions, remains a remarkably precise document of a family living, dying, and scattering across early modern Europe.