Originally laid flat as recumbent grave markers, most of them were lifted and repurposed as vertical headstones sometime during the eighteenth or nineteenth century, a practical intervention that has had an unintended consequence: because they are now set into the ground like ordinary headstones, a significant portion of each slab's carved surface is buried and invisible.

The slabs are predominantly of schist, a locally common metamorphic rock, though four of the twenty, numbers 2, 11, 15, and 16, are of granite. Their distribution within the graveyard tells its own story; they cluster in the southern section, precisely where the later headstone tradition was most active, which suggests they were conscripted into use by families who needed a marker and found one ready to hand. One of the more closely documented examples, cross-slab 6, sits roughly ten metres south-east of Aghowle Church. It measures 77 centimetres in length and tapers from 47 centimetres wide at the top down to 40 centimetres at the base. On its east face is an incised cusped cross, a form in which the angles between the arms are given concave, rounded recesses rather than plain right angles, measuring 37 centimetres across and 60 centimetres tall. The shaft narrows to a point at its base. Within each quadrant formed by the arms of the cross, an incised right angle has been carved, and the two upper ones connect into a framing line that runs across the top and partway down the sides of the slab, giving the composition an architectural quality that repays close looking.

Visitors to the graveyard should be aware that the carved faces of the slabs are not always obvious at first glance, partly because they are set among ordinary burial markers and partly because the carvings are incised rather than raised, meaning they depend on raking light to show clearly. The early morning or late afternoon in lower sun angles will reveal the detail that flat midday light tends to flatten out entirely.