The tilt of the stone is not merely a quirk of time and soil; it actively obscures the full extent of the incised form, meaning the cross it bears has never been properly read. That small frustration, a carving that cannot quite be seen in its entirety, is part of what makes the stone quietly compelling.

In 2010, a graveyard survey conducted by Laurence Dunne identified six cross-slabs at Dunurlin, and this stone, recorded as number 531, was among a cluster of four grouped just outside the south-eastern limits of the church. Cross-slabs are flat or upright stones bearing incised crosses, and they are found across early medieval Irish ecclesiastical sites, often marking graves or serving as devotional objects. The neighbouring stone, number 530, is notably more legible: it carries a deeply incised Latin cross with T-bar terminals on both arms, a finishing detail in which the ends of the cross arms are capped with a horizontal bar. Stone 531, by contrast, is described as rough and only partially exposed, with a deeply cut form that is possibly a Latin cross. The uncertainty in that word "possibly" reflects a genuine difficulty; the stone's inclination means the carving cannot be fully traced or confidently classified. A sixth slab in the same graveyard is modern, bearing a Chi-Rho, the ancient monogram formed from the first two letters of Christ's name in Greek, placed near a bench area and clearly of a different era entirely.