At 1.68 metres tall and set into the earth rather than mounted upright in the conventional sense, it has a solidity and rootedness that suggests it belongs somewhere older than its present surroundings. And it does: this is not where it started.

The slab was almost certainly brought here from an earlier burial ground at Burgage around 1939, as part of the clearances and relocations prompted by the Liffey Reservoir Scheme, the infrastructure project that would eventually create the Poulaphouca Reservoir in west Wicklow. That scheme required the flooding of low-lying land, and communities, graveyards, and historical remains in the affected areas were moved or lost accordingly. The old graveyard at Burgage, where this slab is thought to have originally stood, was one such casualty. The new cemetery became a kind of receiving ground for what could be salvaged. The slab itself, documented by Christiaan Corlett in 2003, is identified as the second of at least two slabs associated with the site.