It is an unassuming object on paper: just over sixty centimetres long, thirty-two centimetres wide, and five centimetres thick. But cut into its face is an inscribed cross, and the slab carries a detail that raises more questions than it answers.

The slab has three perforations drilled through it. Two smaller holes appear near the top, and a cruder, wider perforation, roughly five centimetres in diameter, passes through the stone at the underside junction of the dexter arm, which is to say the right-hand arm of the cross as it would have faced an observer. That larger hole is considered probably secondary, meaning it was not part of the original carving but added at some later point. Why someone would bore a hole through an early Christian cross-slab is not certain. Perforated stones of various kinds appear across early medieval Ireland, sometimes associated with oath-taking, healing rituals, or the passing of objects through stone as a form of ritual contract, though whether any of that applies here is speculation. What the physical evidence does confirm is that this slab had a life beyond its first purpose, and that someone, at some point, found a reason to alter it.