That distance, and the bureaucratic circumstances of its current home, make it an oddly poignant object. It was not moved by collectors or sold between antiquarians; it was simply found during routine ground-clearance works, catalogued, and placed in storage, where it has remained.

The slab was recovered from Inchbofin, a small island on Lough Ree in County Westmeath, in the vicinity of the island's early medieval church. Inchbofin, like many such lake islands in Ireland, was home to a monastic settlement, and the stone fits neatly into that context. It bears a ringed cross, the ring joining the arms in the manner typical of early Irish ecclesiastical carving, with a pointed base and terminals that end in spirals rather than the plain squared-off finials seen on plainer examples. The inscription is what gives it particular interest. Cut along the left side of the slab going down, and continuing up the right side, are the letters MAELMARTAIN. The name is an Old Irish personal name meaning "devotee of Martin," almost certainly a reference to St Martin of Tours, whose cult had considerable reach in early medieval Ireland. Whether Maelmartain was a monk, an abbot, or simply a member of the community commemorated in stone is not recorded. The slab was formally noted by H.S. Crawford in 1913 and later catalogued by R.A.S. Macalister in his Corpus Inscriptionum Insularum Celticarum, a comprehensive mid-twentieth century survey of inscribed stones from across Ireland and Britain.