What makes it worth stopping for is the quality of its carving and the precision of its inscription, both of which have survived nearly five centuries in reasonable enough condition to still be read, at least in part.

The slab is rectangular, just over two metres long and three-quarters of a metre wide, and its surface is decorated with a seven-armed floriated cross in raised relief, meaning the design projects outward from the stone rather than being incised into it. Below the cross-head sits a three-barred knop, a small decorative boss, and the shaft itself is banded and rises from a curving calvary mount, the stepped or rounded base traditionally representing the hill of Golgotha. Around the upper edge of the slab runs a Latin inscription in black letter script, the angular, densely formed lettering common to late medieval stonework across Ireland and Britain. The date 1534 appears in the lower left corner of the margin, and the text, transcribed by the historian William Carrigan in 1905, reads: Hic jacet Thomas Howling quondam Dns de Kilri, ri die Mensis Maii, A.D. 1534. In plain terms: here lies Thomas Howling, lord of Kilri, who died on the eleventh day of May 1534. The monogram I.H.S., an abbreviation of the name of Jesus used widely in late medieval Christian iconography, appears on the upper left side, though that portion of the inscription has faded to near illegibility.

The slab is one of those objects that rewards a slow look. The relief carving is crisp enough in places to give a clear sense of the skill involved, and the marginal inscription, even where faint, traces the full perimeter of the stone in a way that frames the deceased with quiet formality. Thomas Howling, lord of Kilri, left relatively little mark on the historical record beyond this stone, but what he left is specific and legible, which is more than can be said for most of his contemporaries.