It is not displayed on a wall or raised on a plinth; it is a grave cover, the lid of Grave 8, pressed into the earth and partially sealed at its western end by the wall of the early medieval church beside it. The church came later than the burial, or at least that is what the stonework implies, the building edging up against the grave as the monastic enclosure on High Island slowly filled and tightened over generations.

The slab measures just over a metre in visible length and around sixty-three centimetres wide, though its right edge is heavily flaked and the stone has suffered considerably over time. What survives of the carving is unusual enough to reward attention. A central shaft, formed not by a single incised line but by a double band, runs down the face of the stone and then splits apart at its base to enclose a roundel, a small circular boss left proud or incised within the arms of the shaft. At the top left edge, a D-shaped terminal abuts that same roundel, giving the composition an asymmetrical, almost improvisatory quality that distinguishes it from more formulaic cross-slab designs found elsewhere in early Irish monasticism. Cross-slabs of this kind, flat stones incised or relief-carved with a cross motif and used as grave markers or covers, are a common feature of early medieval Irish monastic sites, but the particular grammar of this one, its double-banded shaft, its encircled roundel, its off-centre terminal, places it in a distinct decorative tradition documented by White Marshall and Rourke in their 2000 study of the island's early Christian remains, and more recently by Fisher in 2014.

High Island, known in Irish as Ardoileán, sits several kilometres off the Connemara coast and is accessible only by boat in suitable conditions. The monastic site there is considered one of the better-preserved early medieval complexes in the west of Ireland, and the graveyard in which this slab lies is part of that wider enclosure. Visitors who do make the crossing should look carefully at the northern end of the burial ground, where the slab lies level with the surrounding ground rather than standing upright, easy to overlook unless you are already searching for it.