The head rests in a shallow hollow cut in false relief, while the cross above it is raised from the surface, giving the composition an unusual interplay of depth and projection. The edges of the slab are chamfered, angled back at a consistent width, and the cross-shaft ends not with a simple terminal but with a fleur-de-lys, the stylised lily motif common in medieval ecclesiastical carving. Leaves spring from the shaft at roughly its midpoint, though the cross-head itself has worn down to the point where its original detail is largely lost.

The ambiguity of the figure's identity is part of what makes the slab interesting. Scholar John Hunt, writing in 1974, noted that the carved figure seems to bear a tonsure, the shaved crown that identified a man in holy orders, with a fringe of hair visible on either side of notably prominent ears. If Hunt's reading is correct, this is not a knight at all but a cleric of some rank, commemorated in the 13th century on a tapering limestone slab measuring just under 1.7 metres in length. The slab now lies within a 19th-century Church of Ireland church that was constructed on the footprint of the former chancel of the medieval church of St Mary's, a 13th-century foundation in Gowran. The older church's chancel effectively became the shell into which the later building was inserted, meaning the slab has never truly left its original ecclesiastical context, even as the denomination and the fabric around it changed entirely.