Nearly two metres long and tapering from around 66 centimetres at the top to 46 centimetres at the base, it is a substantial piece of medieval funerary carving, yet it gives almost nothing away. The decoration on its upper portion has worn to near-illegibility, and there is no inscription anywhere on its surface. When the antiquarian Fitzgerald examined it in the early 1900s, his entire assessment amounted to a single word: "Illegible".

What can still be made out, according to Maher's 1997 study, is concentrated in the lower half of the slab, where two broad parallel panels run to pointed ends. The cross-shaft carved into the stone terminates in a sloping calvary mount, a feature in which the base of the cross is shown rising from a stepped or angled mound representing Golgotha, the hill of the crucifixion. The slab also has two breaks in its upper portion, signs of damage accumulated over centuries inside what was, even in ruin, one of the most important ecclesiastical complexes in medieval Ireland. Cashel was the seat of the kings of Munster before becoming an archbishopric, and the cathedral choir where this slab lies would have been a place of considerable prestige for any burial.