That the slab was a memorial to someone specific, and that his name and the exact date of his death had been carved into it in careful Black Letter script, makes the find quietly arresting. The inscription reads, in Latin: "Here lies Lord Thomas Lahe, once prior of this place, who died on the 27th day of the month of February, A.D. 1508."

Kells Priory was a house of Augustinian canons, a religious order whose members lived under the Rule of St Augustine and combined elements of monastic and clerical life. The priory, founded in the twelfth century, accumulated a remarkable collection of graveslabs, of which this is one of the more elaborately decorated examples. The slab measures just over two metres in length and is carved with a banded cross whose head has seven segmented arms terminating in fleur-de-lis. The cross-shaft rises from a curving calvary mount, the small stepped or rounded base that in medieval funerary carving conventionally represents the hill of Golgotha. Below the cross-head, flanking the shaft on either side, are an IHC monogram (a Latinised abbreviation of the name of Jesus, common in medieval devotional contexts) and the name MARIA. The Latin inscription runs along the dexter margin of the slab, which is the right-hand side as you face it, and continues onto the sinister band of the cross itself. A plain border frames the upper edge. The Prior Thomas Lahe commemorated here would have been a senior figure in the community, and the care given to his slab reflects that standing.