They are easy to overlook, which is partly the point: these are among the most basic grave markers ever used in Irish burial practice, rough and unhewn slabs of local slate and sandstone distinguished only by a single notch cut into the top of the stone. That notch is the whole statement. It transforms an otherwise unremarkable piece of rock into the simplest possible form of a cross, a minimal gesture toward Christian burial that requires no carving skill, no inscription, and no identifying detail.

Researcher Dunne, writing in 2012, recorded all fourteen of these stones as part of a broader study of notched headstones across Kerry. The markers are disposed around the interior of the older, medieval section of the graveyard, and not one of them carries a name. Dunne's work placed them within a wider tradition: similar stones have been found in other Kerry graveyards, and the same type appears as far away as St. Colman's Graveyard on Inishbofin Island off the Connemara coast, suggesting a practice that was neither purely local nor confined to a single period. Perhaps the most striking piece of evidence for how these stones were valued and reused came from an excavation at Smerwick, also in Kerry, where Dunne recovered a notched gravestone that had been repurposed as part of the base of a medieval slab-lined grave, the marker of one burial incorporated into the structure of another.

For a visitor to Kilmore graveyard, patience and low light are useful. Many of the fourteen stones are partly or fully obscured by grass, and without knowing what to look for, the notch at the top of each slab can seem like nothing more than a natural flaw in the rock. Getting down to ground level and looking along the line of the stones is often the best way to spot them.