It sits upside-down. That inversion is not accidental damage or careless repositioning over the centuries; it is simply the condition in which the slab now stands, contrary to how it was recorded in an early twentieth-century architectural drawing. The slab is only a fragment, described as the lower portion of what was once a larger piece, and yet the carving that survives is precise and considered.

The fragment measures roughly 1.17 metres long by 0.64 metres wide, tapering slightly along its length. Its decoration follows a formal scheme: a two-line border frames a cross-potent, a form of cross whose four arms each terminate in a transverse bar, giving the appearance of a crutch-head at every end. This one has a square centre, with spirals curling upward from the base and the remaining extremities expanding into rectangles. The design is disciplined, the kind of motif associated with early medieval Irish ecclesiastical carving. Harold Leask, who described the slab in 1950, recorded its dimensions and noted its position in the chancel. A drawing of the slab also appeared in Robert Cochrane's detailed survey of the Glendalough ecclesiastical remains, published in 1925 as part of the Eightieth Annual Report of the Commissioners of Public Works in Ireland, suggesting the slab had already attracted scholarly attention well before Leask wrote about it.

The slab is inside the chancel of St Mary's, which sits within the broader Glendalough monastic enclosure. Visitors who make their way into the church itself will find it propped against the wall, easy to overlook if attention is drawn to the architecture of the building rather than its contents. Knowing that the slab is currently displayed inverted from its recorded orientation gives the carved spirals a slightly different quality once you are standing in front of it, the base of the design now at the top, the geometry quietly rearranged.