Among the pieces recovered at the graveyard of Newtown Earley was a fragment that raises more questions than it answers: the lower portion of a graveslab, now roughly half a metre long and just under a third of a metre wide, broken somewhere below its centre and bearing a chamfered edge, meaning the stone's border has been cut at an angle to produce a neat, bevelled frame. Modest in size, it is the kind of object that might easily be overlooked, yet the carving preserved on its surface connects it to a distinct tradition of medieval stonework.

The slab carries a cross-shaft with a knop, a rounded protrusion or knob-like swelling on the shaft, rising to a fleur-de-lys terminal, the stylised three-petalled motif borrowed from heraldic decoration and widely used in ecclesiastical carving across medieval Ireland and Britain. On the basis of these decorative details, the piece has been dated stylistically to the thirteenth or fourteenth century, placing it squarely in the period when the church at Newtown Earley was an active place of worship and burial. R. Harte documented the slab in a 1987 article in the Old Kilkenny Review, illustrating and recording its dimensions, though it was not assigned a catalogue number or formal description at that time. The clean-up that brought it and a large number of companion slabs to attention was carried out between 1985 and 1987.

The slabs uncovered during that work are now lying within the interior of the medieval church itself, sheltered from further weathering. The fragment in question is without an inscription or identifying marks, so the person it once commemorated remains unknown. What survives is simply the lower portion of the stone, the cross-shaft rising toward a break, and above that break, nothing. It is a common condition for medieval graveslabs: partial, anonymous, and quietly eloquent about the limits of what the past chooses to preserve.