A seventeenth-century graveslab, nearly two metres long and tapered from head to foot, rests flat against the base of the south wall, its edges ringed with text that has been worn by time and further obscured by the weight of wooden seating placed directly on top of it. The letters survive, in principle, but remain effectively sealed off from view.

The slab itself is well preserved in terms of its decorative programme, even if the surface shows the softening that centuries of exposure tend to produce. Carved into the stone is a tri-lobed cross head, a form in which the top and two arms of the cross each terminate in a rounded lobe, with a single letter placed inside each of the three lobes. Beneath the cross head, a line and a knop, a small rounded boss or protrusion, mark the transition to the shaft, which rises from a stepped base. Arranged across the face of the slab are the Instruments of the Passion, the symbolic objects associated with the crucifixion, a common feature of late medieval and early modern funerary carving in Ireland. Running continuously around all four edges is the inscription that remains, for now, unread, its full text pressed against the floor and the wall, inaccessible beneath the pews.

Holycross Abbey, a Cistercian foundation on the River Suir in County Tipperary, has a long history of use and reuse, and several carved stones from different periods survive within its walls. This particular slab sits in the chapel furthest from the chancel in the southern transept, a quiet corner of a building that has seen considerable attention over the years. Whether the letters in the cross lobes form initials, abbreviations, or something else entirely is a question the stonework cannot currently answer.