Four of them have been built directly into the arch of one of the east windows of Tully church, their carved granite faces absorbed into the fabric of the building rather than laid flat in the ground. It is the kind of quiet reuse that speaks to centuries of pragmatic maintenance, where older carved stones were simply incorporated wherever they happened to fit.

The slab in question is one of eleven granite early medieval, or pre-Norman, graveslabs recorded at Tully graveyard, catalogued by Swords in 2009. Graveslabs of this type are grave markers cut from local stone and often incised with a simple cross or decorative motif, placed over a burial during the early Christian period in Ireland, broadly spanning the sixth to twelfth centuries. This particular example measures 0.94 metres in length and tapers from 0.56 metres at its wider end down to 0.23 metres, the tapering shape being characteristic of the form. The eleven slabs at Tully represent a notable concentration of the type for County Dublin, and the detail that four of them ended up built into a window arch rather than remaining as freestanding markers suggests the church underwent significant repair or alteration at some point, drawing on whatever stone was at hand.

Tully graveyard and the remains of Tully church sit in Laughanstown, not far from Cherrywood in the southern Dublin suburbs. The site is recorded in the National Monuments Service database under the references DU026-023001 and DU026-023002 for the church and graveyard respectively. Visiting during daylight with reasonable weather makes it easier to study the stonework closely, particularly the east window where the repurposed slabs are incorporated into the arch. It is worth taking time with the window rather than moving quickly through the site, since the slabs are set into masonry and can be easy to overlook if you are not specifically looking for them.