Originally designed to lie flat as recumbent grave markers, most of these slabs have been repurposed at some point as upright burial markers, a practical reuse that has inadvertently buried a portion of each stone in the ground. The carvings many of them carry are consequently only partially visible, their lower sections hidden beneath the soil.

The slabs cluster mainly in the southern part of the graveyard, which is also where the later headstones are concentrated, suggesting that the two functions became intertwined as the site continued to be used for burial over the centuries. Most of the slabs are made from schist, a locally common metamorphic rock with a layered, slightly flaky texture, though four of the twenty, numbered 2, 11, 15, and 16, are of granite. One of the more closely documented examples, Cross slab 4, sits adjacent to the south-east corner of Aghowle Church. It measures 42 centimetres wide and 8 centimetres thick, and currently stands 60 centimetres high, with one corner broken away. On its east face, a lightly incised cusped cross, a design in which the arms of the cross end in concave, curved recesses, extends across the full width of the slab, its shaft measuring 7.5 centimetres wide.

Visitors to the graveyard who take time to look closely at the upright stones will notice that what appears to be a modest collection of old headstones is, on inspection, something older and stranger, early Christian carved stonework pressed into a secondary life among the graves of a much later era.