It is just under two metres long and tapers slightly from head to foot, and cut into its surface is a ringed cross, the kind where a circle intersects the arms, drawn here with a double-incised line and ending in a stepped base. There is no inscription anywhere on the stone. Whatever name it once marked, if it ever carried one, is gone.

The cross type carved on this slab belongs to a tradition of early medieval stone decoration found across Ireland and Britain, in which a simple but carefully proportioned design was used to identify a grave without elaborate lettering or figurative carving. The ringed or wheel cross, with its characteristic halo around the junction of the arms, appears on slabs ranging from the early Christian period onward, and the stepped base here adds a further decorative formality to an otherwise plain composition. Ruan Church itself sits in the townland of Portlecka, and this slab is one of several still present at the site. Others nearby carry similar incised ringed crosses, while a different group bear raised Latin crosses, suggesting the churchyard accumulated memorials across a considerable span of time, each in the style current when it was made. The diagonal fracture across the middle of this particular slab is one of those details that draws the eye; it was not placed there deliberately, and nobody thought to move or repair the stone.