It is not a grand or imposing object. Measuring 1.72 metres in length and tapering from 0.6 metres wide at the western end to 0.42 metres at the eastern, it is a wedge-shaped piece of rough-edged stone, cracked clean across its middle at some point in its long history. What makes it quietly arresting is what runs along its surface: a single-lined incised cross rising from a stepped base, carved the full length of the slab. The top of the cross has been worn entirely away, erased by time and foot traffic, leaving only the lower portion to suggest what the full composition once looked like.

Ennis Friary was founded in the thirteenth century, a Franciscan house that grew into one of the more significant friaries in Clare. The graveslab almost certainly dates to the medieval period, though its original location within the friary is unknown; it has been moved at least once and now rests among a cluster of later stones, including several from the nineteenth century and a number of uninscribed, undated slabs that offer no clues as to who they once marked. The slab's tapered, wedge-shaped form is a recognisable feature of medieval Irish funerary carving, typically placed over individual graves with the broader end at the head. According to Bradley, Halpin and King, writing in 1988, this is the earliest such slab yet identified at the site, which gives it a significance that its battered, floor-level position does little to announce.