That is precisely what happened to the large limestone slab commemorating the Reverend John Hickey, Archdeacon of Emly, which now lies flat in the gravel edging immediately south of St. John's Church of Ireland Cathedral in Cashel. It is not displayed, framed, or interpreted. It simply lies there, level with the path, doing the practical work of containing loose gravel while the carved details that once marked a man's passing slowly weather away beneath open sky.

The slab is substantial, measuring just over two and a half metres in length and more than a metre wide. Despite considerable erosion, several decorative elements remain at least partially legible. At the upper end, a coat of arms carries a shield charged with three fleur-de-lys, surrounded by an elaborate mantling, the ornamental flourishes of helmet and drapery conventional to heraldic carving of the period. A scroll at the base of the arms likely once bore a motto. At the lower end, a skull-and-crossbones appears within a swag, a carved garland or drape used as a decorative frame, common on post-medieval funerary monuments where mortality imagery was expected rather than morbid. The upper corners each hold a winged cherub head, the one on the dexter side (the right side of the shield as the bearer would hold it, the viewer's left) being the better preserved of the two. Whatever lettering once occupied the centre of the slab is now beyond reading, and no date remains visible in the stone itself. Writing in 1902 in volume five of his work on Cashel, FitzGerald recorded what the inscription then said, transcribing it as commemorating John Hickey, Archdeacon of Emly, who died on the fourteenth of September 1726 at the age of sixty. The cathedral stands on the site of a medieval church, and the graveyard around it has accumulated its own long history of burials and monuments. FitzGerald noted that this slab was the first of several being used as edging stones along the gravel path on the south side of the building, suggesting that by the early twentieth century the repurposing was already well established.