Three early medieval cross-slabs were recorded inside Tipperkevin Church in Commons, Co. Kildare, in 1985, yet within a year only one could be found. The other two had apparently vanished during a period when the church interior was dug out, leaving behind a quiet puzzle about where they went and what disrupted them.

Cross-slabs are among the more understated survivors of early Christian Ireland, grave markers or commemorative stones on which a cross was carved or cut into the surface, sometimes with great simplicity, sometimes with more elaborate ornament. The three slabs at Tipperkevin each took a different approach. The first, a tapered granite slab measuring 1.83 metres in length, carried an incised Greek cross with expanded arms, the four arms of equal length flaring slightly at their ends. The second was larger still, nearly 1.9 metres long and up to 0.77 metres wide, and bore a single shaft with a ringed cross at each end worked in relief rather than incised, giving the design a physical presence above the stone surface. The third was a fragment, preserving only the lower portion of a slab, its cross reduced to two parallel incised lines suggesting the shaft. When a follow-up visit was made in 1986, the interior of the church had evidently been recently excavated or cleared, and only this third, fragmentary slab could be located. The other two were gone. Two of the three slabs were later published by Healy in 2009, drawing on the 1985 documentation, which means the record of what was once there survives even if the stones themselves do not all remain in place.