The slab is tapered, measuring just under a metre and a half in length, and its carved surface bears a floriated cross, that is, a cross with decorative leafy or flower-like terminals, set within a raised border that curls into spirals at each corner. That finishing detail, the spiralled corners, is what marks it out as slightly more elaborate than the other slabs of its type found in the same church.

The scholar R.A.S. Macalister examined the stone in 1913 and proposed a date of around 1680, placing it in the late seventeenth century. Jill McKeon, writing in 2009, disagreed, arguing on stylistic grounds that the slab is considerably older and most likely belongs to the thirteenth or fourteenth century, a period that aligns far more naturally with the Dominican presence at Athenry, which was established in the medieval period and left behind a substantial collection of funerary stonework in the church. Macalister himself observed that floriated cross slabs of this general type were common throughout the building, though he singled this example out as the more ornate among them. The gap between his proposed date and McKeon's is not a minor quibble; three or four centuries of difference reflects genuinely distinct carving traditions, and the spiralled border detail is central to the argument about which period the stone belongs to. Several related slabs survive nearby in the same church, suggesting this was once a well-appointed interior with a considerable funerary programme, much of which now survives only in fragments.