They are not. Originally laid flat as recumbent slabs, covering or commemorating the dead in the manner typical of early Christian burial practice in Ireland, most were repurposed at some point as upright headstones, slotted into the ground like any eighteenth or nineteenth-century memorial. The consequence of that practical reuse is that a significant portion of each slab, including much of the carved surface, now sits below ground level, effectively hidden from view.

The slabs cluster in the southern section of the graveyard, which corresponds to where the bulk of the later headstones are found, a distribution that reflects when and why the cross-slabs were pressed into their new role. The majority are of schist, a fine-grained metamorphic stone common in the Wicklow uplands, though four of the twenty, numbered 2, 11, 15, and 16, are of granite. One of the granite examples, Cross-slab 2, stands at the north-east end of the gable of Aghowle church itself. It measures 42 centimetres wide and 15 centimetres thick, and currently stands 50 centimetres above the ground. On its east face is an incised cross that originally extended the full width of the stone, though the lower portion of that carving is now buried and no longer visible.

Visitors walking the graveyard should look carefully at the upright stones in the southern half, particularly any that seem older or less regular than the standard inscribed headstones around them. The partial concealment of the carvings means that what is visible above ground often gives only a fragmentary sense of what each slab once showed. Cross-slab 2, beside the church gable, is among the more straightforward to locate and offers a clear, if incomplete, example of the incised cross form that characterises the group.