Roughly square, measuring about thirty centimetres on each side, it bears a three-line cross with looped terminals and a circular centre, the kind of early Christian incised decoration that appears across Irish monastic sites from the early medieval period. What makes this particular slab quietly anomalous is not the carving itself but the gap between where it was made and where it now sits, boxed away in an Office of Public Works storage facility far from its original home.

The slab originated on Inchbofin, an island in Lough Ree on the Westmeath shore, where it lay in the vicinity of a church site. It came to light during ground-clearance works, and by 1913 had been recorded in the annual report of the Commissioners of Public Works, which catalogued it as Slab D in an appendix. That same year, Henry Crawford described it in print, giving its dimensions and noting the distinctive looped terminals of the cross design. A closely similar slab, presumably from the same ecclesiastical context on the island, is recorded separately, suggesting the site once held a small collection of carved stonework. Inchbofin on Lough Ree has an early monastic association, and cross-slabs of this type were commonly used in early Irish Christianity as grave markers or devotional stones, incised rather than sculpted in the round. At some point after its discovery, this example was moved to Athenry, where it remains in OPW care rather than on public display.