The object in question is an irregularly shaped slab bearing an elaborately carved cross in relief within a circle, a type of early medieval stone carving found at ecclesiastical sites across Ireland, where the encircling ring may echo the form of a ringed or Celtic cross. What distinguishes this particular record is its nature as a marker of absence: it documents not where the stone is, but where it used to be.

Illaunmore, whose name derives from the Irish for "big island", was evidently home to this slab at some earlier point, though it has since been moved to another location. The stone's original setting on an island suggests an association with the kind of early Christian hermitage or monastic enclosure that frequently occupied such isolated spots along the western seaboard, where remoteness was considered spiritually advantageous rather than merely inconvenient. The carving itself, a cross rendered in relief rather than incised into the surface, points to a degree of craft and intention; someone went to considerable trouble to produce it, and later someone else went to considerable trouble to move it.