Originally laid flat as recumbent grave covers, the kind of marker meant to lie horizontally over a burial, they were later pulled upright and pressed into service as conventional headstones. The consequence is that the lower portions of most slabs are buried in the ground, concealing whatever carving or inscription may once have been visible there.

The reuse happened gradually, and the geography of the graveyard tells part of the story. The slabs cluster in the southern section, which is also where the 18th and 19th century headstones are concentrated. Someone, at some point, needed markers and these older stones were close to hand. Most of the slabs are cut from schist, a locally available metamorphic rock with a fine, layered texture, though four of the twenty, slabs 2, 11, 15, and 16, are granite. One slab, positioned at the south-east end of the east gable of Aghowle Church, gives a sense of what survives when a stone remains relatively accessible. It stands 57cm high, measures 53cm wide and 10cm thick, and on its east face carries a faintly incised cusped cross, 35cm across with a shaft 8cm wide. The carving is delicate, easy to miss in flat light.

Visitors moving through the graveyard should look carefully at the upright stones rather than past them. The cross slabs do not announce themselves as ancient; set among later headstones, they can read simply as old and plain. The incised decoration, where it remains visible, tends to be shallow and worn, so a low raking light, morning or evening, makes a considerable difference to what can be made out on the stone faces.