The slabs, flat stones engraved with effigies, inscriptions, or decorative motifs to mark individual graves, are scattered across the ground in considerable numbers, making this one of the more significant concentrations of such material in Tipperary.

The graveyard runs along the north side of the abbey church, and burials extend into the ruinous north transept itself, the roofless projecting arm of the church that now stands open to the sky. The Augustinian abbey to which all of this belongs sits to the east of Fethard's walled town, a layout that places it just beyond the historic boundary of the settlement proper. Fethard itself retains some of the most complete medieval town walls in Ireland, and the abbey's position outside those walls reflects the common medieval practice of situating mendicant and regular religious houses at the fringes of urban centres. The graveslabs date from the late medieval period, suggesting the cemetery was in active and commemorative use during the later centuries before the dissolution of the monasteries disrupted such communities across the country.