It would be easy to walk past without noticing it at all, which makes the fact that it survives in any legible form quietly remarkable.

The stone is one of six cross-inscribed slabs recorded at Dunurlin during a graveyard survey conducted by Laurence Dunne in 2010. Cross-inscribed slabs are among the simpler forms of early Christian memorial marker, typically flat stones incised with a cross rather than shaped into a full standing monument, and they are found at early ecclesiastical sites across Ireland. Of the six slabs recorded here, one is a modern addition, bearing a Chi-Rho symbol, the ancient monogram formed from the first two letters of the Greek word for Christ, placed near a bench area within the graveyard. The stone catalogued as number 533 is a different matter: it is described as barely visible above the ground, with a deeply incised cross that remains only partially legible. The depth of that incision is what has kept the carving readable at all, even as the slab has gradually sunk.