A Tau cross takes its name from the Greek letter T, its horizontal bar sitting flat across the top of the shaft with no upward extension, a form associated with early Christian and monastic tradition. One of these stones carries an incised cross on its face, a detail easy to miss given its modest scale, but the kind of thing that rewards a close look. Alongside these sit two small conventional stone crosses, one of which retains faint traces of a three-sided outline square at the junction of arms and shaft on its western face, a decorative or symbolic convention that would once have been more legible. Other markers in the same graveyard include a stone inscribed with a Latin cross with bar terminals, another bearing an equal-armed cross with expanded terminals beside the letters R.I.P., and one grave marked by what appears to be a reused spud stone, a small peg-shaped stone ordinarily used in cultivation, pressed quietly into service as a burial marker.

The complex at Kilmalkedar, known in Irish as Cill Maoilchéadair, occupies a sheltered position at the foot of the western slopes of Reenconnell hill, whose ridge rises to 276 metres to the north-east. The site looks out towards Smerwick Harbour, with spurs of the hill offering natural shelter from north and south. The place belongs to a landscape dense with early medieval activity, and the variety of stonework in the graveyard alone, ranging from incised Tau forms to repurposed agricultural stones, suggests a long continuity of burial practice across different periods and different levels of craft.