It was unearthed not by archaeologists with a research agenda but by gravediggers doing ordinary work, cutting new plots into old ground and turning up something older still. The stone carries an inscription for Catrine Russel, who died on the 12th of May 1637, aged 65 years, and that single fact makes it quietly remarkable: it is the earliest legible gravestone known from this site, a small piece of personal record surviving nearly four centuries underground before being disturbed and, apparently, lost to view again.

The stone was recorded by the Fingal Historic Graveyards Project, a systematic effort to document the burial grounds of the Fingal area of north County Dublin, and its details appear in Volume 2 of that survey, covering Garristown Graveyard. The survey notes that the stone was excavated during the digging of new plots, which places its rediscovery in the context of the graveyard's continued use rather than any dedicated investigation. Seventeenth-century headstones are uncommon survivals in Irish graveyards generally; the tradition of marking individual graves with inscribed stones was only beginning to take hold in the early 1600s, and most stones from that period have been lost to weathering, reuse, or simple neglect. The inscription follows a formula typical of its era, plain and direct, giving name, date, and age without flourish.

The graveyard at Garristown is accessible to visitors, though anyone hoping to locate Catrine Russel's stone should be aware that its precise position within the graveyard has not been established. The Fingal Historic Graveyards Project records it as unlocated, meaning the stone may be buried again, repositioned, or simply difficult to identify without further investigation. A visit to the graveyard is still worthwhile for anyone interested in early modern funerary commemoration, and the broader survey documentation, available through Fingal County Council's heritage resources, gives useful context for what the graveyard contains across its various periods of use.