It is a small thing, only about seven centimetres thick, and what makes it worth pausing over is a particular detail of its construction. The ring encircling the head is unpierced, solid stone rather than the open framework seen on the more celebrated high crosses of Ireland, and the cross itself is carved in only slight relief, its arms defined by almost straight bevels rather than deep cutting.

The cross was recorded and described by Harold Leask in his 1950 study of Glendalough, a careful survey of the national monuments then vested in the Commissioners of Public Works. Leask was one of the foremost architectural historians of early Irish ecclesiastical sites, and his methodical attention to fragments like this one, easy to overlook beside grander structures, has preserved a record of objects that might otherwise go unexamined. The site known as Sevenchurches is the older name for the western part of the Glendalough valley, reflecting the cluster of early medieval religious buildings gathered there over centuries of monastic use. A ringed cross of this type belongs to a long tradition of Irish stone carving, though the unpierced ring is a less common variation; most surviving examples have the spaces between the arms and the ring cut through entirely, giving the characteristic open silhouette associated with Irish high crosses.