Inside Furness Church in Forenaghts Great, Co. Kildare, there is a granite slab that rewards a closer look than it might initially invite. Gently tapering along its length, it measures just over 1.6 metres long and varies in width from 37 to 53 centimetres, with a thickness of 22 centimetres. What makes it quietly compelling is the cross carved into its face in low relief, a technique where the design is raised only slightly above the surrounding stone, giving the decoration a restrained, almost reticent quality. The cross has a broad shaft and transom, and its head takes the form of a circular disc, a shape associated with the ringed or wheel-headed crosses common in early medieval Irish Christianity. From the centre of that disc, a single incised line runs down the full length of the shaft, a detail so spare it might almost be missed.

Cross-slabs of this kind are among the simpler expressions of early Christian stone carving in Ireland, predating or running alongside the more elaborate high crosses, and often marking graves or serving as devotional objects within church enclosures. The Furness Church example, noted by Synnott in 1969 and subsequently by Healy in 2009, has attracted relatively little wider attention despite sitting within an ecclesiastical site in a county better known for its Norman castles and Georgian estates. The granite from which it is carved is a durable and coarse-grained stone, which may account for the broad, undetailed rendering of the cross rather than the finer interlace or figural work found on softer sandstone slabs elsewhere in Ireland.