It was, in other words, repurposed as a practical border stone, its decorated face more or less level with the ground, its origins as a piece of early medieval stonework easy to overlook entirely.

The slab itself was modest in size, roughly 45 centimetres visible above ground, tapering from a basal width of 37 centimetres to 24 centimetres at the top, and just 11 centimetres thick. On one face, a single cross-arm had been incised into the stone, measuring 29 centimetres across, with an expanded terminal, meaning the arm widened slightly at its end in a manner common to early Christian decorative carving in Ireland. Slabs of this type typically date from the early medieval period and were used as grave markers or boundary stones associated with ecclesiastical sites. This one had clearly been moved and reused at some point, its original context long lost by the time anyone thought to record it. The graveyard at Bansha sits immediately east of the main road through the village, with the Ara River running to the north, and the stone lay on that northern side, quietly embedded in the landscape of the dead.

Since 1996, when a new burial plot was added at the foot of the Keating plot, the slab has been covered over and is no longer visible at ground level. It remains there, presumably, beneath the added ground, a carved fragment of early medieval work that spent its later centuries as a footer and now lies out of sight entirely.