What makes it quietly compelling is not what you can see but what has almost entirely disappeared. The surface has spalled so severely over time that the original decorative carving has been reduced to little more than a pair of parallel incised lines marking what was once the shaft of a cross. A chamfered edge, a narrow angled border cut into the stone, survives on one side but not the other, and there may once have been a chamfer along the top as well, though wear has made that uncertain.

The slab carries the visible traces of at least two distinct lives. Its first identity, as a medieval graveslab likely carved with a full decorative cross, has been almost entirely erased by time and damage. At some point, probably in the eighteenth or nineteenth century, it was reused, and a later inscription was cut into the upper portion, layering a newer commemoration onto the worn face of an older one. This kind of reuse was not unusual in Irish ecclesiastical settings, where good flat stone was a practical resource as much as a devotional object. Maher, writing in 1987, recorded the slab's condition and dimensions, and even then it was in a poor state. A crack runs across the upper portion, adding to the sense of a surface that has been subject to considerable stress over centuries.