What makes it quietly arresting is precisely what it lacks: there is no inscription, no carved effigy, no knotwork or cross to indicate who was important enough to be buried beneath a slab more than two metres long. Medieval graveslabs of this type were typically commissioned for people of some social standing, clergy or local gentry, and decorated surfaces were the norm rather than the exception. This one offers nothing of the sort.

The slab is slightly tapering, measuring 2.06 metres in length and 0.6 metres wide at the top, narrowing to 0.55 metres at the base, with only about 2.5 centimetres visible above ground level. It is broken into two pieces, the upper portion running 0.77 metres and the lower 1.27 metres, and the fracture itself has become part of the object's character. Whether the surface was once decorated and has simply been worn smooth by centuries of foot traffic, or whether it was always plain, is impossible to say now. St. Dominick's Abbey was a Dominican foundation, an order of friars who arrived in Ireland during the thirteenth century and typically established houses in towns, and the abbey church's nave would have been a place of considerable activity over several centuries of religious use.