It is easy to walk past without recognising what it is: a wayside cross, Latin in form, decorated with a distinctive pattern of incised grooves that trace the outline of its arms and shaft. What makes it peculiar is the carving at its centre, where the grooves converge to form a saltire, that is, a diagonal X-shape, with additional panels echoing the same geometry along the arms, and a tapering two-line panel running down the shaft. It is an unusual piece of stonework, understated but clearly deliberate.

The cross was described in 1950 by Harold Leask, the Irish architectural historian, who noted its singular decorative scheme and placed it in the context of the ecclesiastical landscape around Glendalough. The site carries the placename Sevenchurches, a name historically associated with Glendalough's cluster of early medieval religious buildings, and the cross sits directly on what Leask identified as the ancient Pilgrims' Road, a route now almost entirely obliterated, along which medieval pilgrims would have travelled to reach the monastic site. Wayside crosses of this kind functioned as markers and focuses for prayer along such routes, their positions as significant as their carving. A drawing of the slab appeared in Robert Cochrane's survey of the ecclesiastical remains at Glendalough, published in 1925 as part of a report by the Commissioners of Public Works, suggesting the cross had attracted documentary attention well before Leask's account.

The cross sits in a low mound close to the lakeshore path, and its modest scale means that knowing to look for it matters. The saltire pattern at the centre and the grooved panelling on the shaft are the details worth pausing over, a geometry that sets it apart from the more familiar ring-headed high crosses that draw most attention elsewhere in the valley.