The piece measures just 45 centimetres at its greatest surviving length, yet it carries enough decorative detail to be read: an incised floriated cross, its upper arm and right-hand fleur-de-lis still legible, the left side sheared away as though the break were deliberate. The cross head forms a lozenge shape, with a worn motif at its centre and a double-lined incised circle running beneath the fleur-de-lis. What remains is a carefully worked object, reduced by time or accident to a fragment of itself.

The slab is dated on stylistic grounds to the thirteenth or fourteenth century, a period when Anglo-Norman families were consolidating their presence across Kilkenny. The chapel in which it lies takes its name from the Grace family, and a tantalising connection emerges from a 1905 study by William Carrigan, who noted that certain slabs from the site were already missing by his time. One of those absent slabs carried an inscription in Lombardic script, a formal lettering style common on medieval funerary monuments, which Carrigan transcribed as: WILLEM : LE : GRAS : GIST : ISCI : DEU : SON : ALMG : EIT : MERCI. The language is Anglo-Norman French, and the meaning is plain enough: William Grace lies here. God have mercy on his soul. The fragment now at Tullaroan was not identified in Carrigan's account, but its date, its location in the Grace chapel, and its script style are all consistent with the missing slab he described. Whether the inscription once ran along the portion now lost is a question the stone itself cannot answer.