What makes it worth a second look is the cross carved across its surface in raised relief, a six-armed design with terminals that depart from the standard forms of the period, giving the whole composition an air of considered, slightly individual craftsmanship. There is no inscription anywhere on the stone, so whoever lies beneath it, if anyone does, left no name for posterity to read.

The slab measures 1.86 metres in length, tapering from 0.65 metres at the top to 0.49 metres at the base, with a minimum thickness of around 8 centimetres. Beneath the cross-head sits a knop, a small rounded projection used as a transitional element between the head and shaft, and the shaft itself ends in a plain stepped base. The straight sides of the slab carry punch-tooling, a decorative technique in which small repeated marks are struck into the stone surface with a pointed tool, though the workmanship is noticeably finer on the dexter side, the right-hand side when viewed from the foot, than on the sinister. Whether this reflects two different hands, a change in the carver's pace, or simply the economics of effort on a surface less likely to face outward, is not recorded. On stylistic grounds, the slab is placed in the thirteenth or fourteenth century, a period when such decorated grave monuments were produced in some number across Leinster and Munster.

St Mary's itself is a large medieval structure, and the slab rests in the nave's north aisle, where it lies prostrate rather than standing upright or set into a wall. Visitors walking the length of the aisle may pass it without registering what it is, which is perhaps the best reason to look down as well as up when moving through the building.