Yet even in its broken state, the craftsmanship is legible. The surviving portion carries part of an eight-armed floriated interlace cross-head, a design in which the arms of the cross branch outward into interlocking, plant-like forms, all contained within a double-lined circle. At the centre of the cross-head, a further decorative motif sits within its own small circle. Only two of the arms and most of the central decoration remain on this piece, but they are enough to suggest the ambition of the original composition.

The slab came to light during a clean-up of the graveyard at Newtown Earley between 1985 and 1987, and was subsequently documented by R. Harte in the Old Kilkenny Review. Stylistically, the piece dates to the thirteenth or fourteenth century, placing it within the later medieval period when such decorated graveslabs, carved in a tradition that blended Hiberno-Romanesque ornament with newer Gothic sensibilities, were produced across Ireland for ecclesiastical and lay patrons alike. The church it is associated with, the medieval structure at Newtown Earley, provides the broader context: a site where the accumulated material of several centuries of burial practice lay quietly underfoot until a routine clearance brought at least some of it back into view. The slab now lies within the church itself, sheltered from further weathering.