Instead of lying flat as markers in their own right, they have been pressed into service as supporting stones propping up a broken 18th-century memorial. It is the kind of quiet, accidental archaeology that graveyards quietly accumulate over centuries, where older material gets recycled not out of disrespect but simply because it was there and useful.

The fragments belong to the graveyard associated with a medieval church at Crohane Lower, both of which survive on the same site. Medieval graveslabs, typically carved from local stone and often bearing incised crosses or decorative knotwork, were produced across Ireland from roughly the 12th century onwards. That these two pieces were broken or displaced at some point before the 18th century is clear from the fact that a later mason saw no obstacle to repurposing them structurally. The 18th-century memorial they now support is itself broken, which gives the whole arrangement a slightly melancholy layering, one damaged thing propped up by the remains of something older and equally damaged.