The slab, a slightly tapering piece of granite roughly a metre long and up to 43 centimetres wide, bears a ringed cross carved in relief, the kind of decorative motif associated with early Christian and medieval memorial stones across Ireland. That it ended up overhead in a window opening, bearing the weight of masonry rather than marking a grave, says something about the pragmatic relationship older communities often had with earlier stonework.

The slab's more recent history is bound up with a structural accident. When the church tower at Burgage collapsed in 1987, the debris exposed what had been hidden in plain sight. Three graveslabs came to light, and in 1993 the late Paddy Healy recorded descriptions of all three. The ringed-cross slab was among them, catalogued in Corlett's 2003 study as Slab 5. For a period after that recording its whereabouts were uncertain, listed simply as unknown. It was eventually relocated to a spot approximately ten metres north-west of the north-west corner of the towerhouse at Burgage, a late medieval tower house that still stands on the site.