What makes them quietly strange today is that at some point, presumably during the busier burial periods of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they were pulled upright and pressed into service as conventional headstones. The result is a graveyard where ancient carved stones stand shoulder to shoulder with later markers, many of the slabs now sunk into the ground and partially concealed, their carved surfaces only partly legible.

Cross-slabs of this kind are among the more understated survivals of early Christian Ireland, typically schist or granite stones incised with a simple cross, sometimes elaborated with interlace or other decoration, and placed flat over significant burials. At Aghowle, most of the slabs are of schist, a locally available metamorphic stone with a naturally layered quality, though four of the twenty, slabs 2, 11, 15, and 16, are of granite. One slab, number 14, sits inside the east end of the ruined Aghowle church itself rather than among the headstones. It is relatively small, measuring 61 centimetres across and 12 centimetres thick, and currently stands 40 centimetres high. On its east face is a simple incised cross running the full width of the stone, formed by a groove between one and one and a half centimetres wide and roughly eight millimetres deep, precise and deliberate work for all its plainness.

The concentration of cross-slabs in the southern part of the graveyard, where the post-medieval headstones cluster most thickly, suggests that the reuse happened gradually as the need for grave markers grew and older stones were conveniently to hand. Visiting the site, it is worth looking closely at the bases of the upright markers, since the lower portions of many slabs remain hidden below ground level, and whatever carving they once carried may still be there, simply out of sight.