What sets it apart is a combination of precision and plainness: a Latin cross rising from a stepped Calvary base, the monogram INRI inscribed across its arms, and beneath it, a direct, almost blunt instruction carved in stone, "PRAY IN HONOUR OF GOD AND THE SAINT, 1716".

The slab itself is rectangular, measuring roughly 60 centimetres tall, 90 centimetres wide, and 12 centimetres thick. That date, 1716, places it in the decades following the worst of the Penal Laws, a period when Catholic devotional practice in Ireland occupied an uncertain legal and social space. Outdoor altars of this kind, sometimes called Mass rocks, were used for open-air worship when access to churches was restricted or impossible. The altar on which this slab rests is described by Bradley and Dunne, writing in 1992, as poorly preserved, and the slab itself was originally set into a socketed base, meaning it was designed to stand upright and be read, rather than simply laid flat. The Calvary base beneath the cross, a stepped platform representing the hill of Golgotha, is a conventional element of devotional iconography, but its appearance here on a modest outdoor stone, made at a time of religious uncertainty, gives it a particular weight.