It is not mounted on a wall or raised on a plinth; it simply lies there, level with the ground, as it was always meant to. That quiet horizontal presence is part of what makes it easy to overlook, and part of what makes it worth pausing over.

The slab, measuring just under two metres in length and tapering slightly from top to base, is carved in relief with a seven-armed segmental-headed cross, an unusual variant in which the cross-head is formed from curved segments rather than strict right angles. At the base of the cross-head sits a two-barred knop, a small decorative boss, and the shaft itself rises from a carved pillar-base form, giving the whole composition a sense of architectural solidity. Around or below the cross runs a Latin inscription in Roman script: HIC JACET JOHANNES HIGGIN ET UXOR EIUS ELENA MORRISIS QUI HOC FIERI FECERUNT, Ao 1627. Translated by W. Knowles in 1904, this reads: "Here lies John Higgin and his wife, Ellen Morrisis, who erected this Monument, A.D. 1627." The phrasing is worth noting. John and Ellen commissioned and paid for the slab themselves, during their own lifetimes, which was not uncommon practice in early seventeenth-century Ireland. They did not leave it to heirs or executors; they arranged their own memorial, inscribed their own names, and presumably walked past it in the same church for whatever years remained to them. The church itself, dedicated to St John the Baptist, is medieval in origin, and the building that houses the slab today continues in use as the Church of Ireland parish church for Fethard.