A graveslab of this type would typically be a flat or slightly tapered limestone slab, sometimes bearing a raised cross, foliate decoration, or an inscription identifying the person commemorated beneath it. Many have been moved over the centuries, built into later walls, repositioned within churches, or simply left in the open where they were found.

Athenry itself has a layered ecclesiastical past that makes the presence of such a slab entirely unsurprising. The Dominican priory founded there in the thirteenth century was one of the more significant houses of its order in Connacht, and the town functioned as an important Anglo-Norman settlement following the de Bermingham family's establishment of it in the early 1200s. Graveslabs associated with such foundations frequently commemorated members of local lordly families, clergy, or prosperous townspeople, and the Athenry area has yielded various carved medieval fragments over the years, many now held in local collections or repositioned within the priory ruins.

Beyond its association with a place of considerable medieval depth, the slab's specific details remain to be fully documented in the public record. What is certain is that carved funerary stonework of this kind repays close attention: the worn surface of a medieval graveslab, when the light falls at the right angle, can reveal incised lines and lettering that are otherwise almost invisible.