The cross incised onto it is a cross potent, a form in which each arm of equal length is capped at its end by a short bar set at a right angle, giving the whole motif a bracketed, almost architectural quality. What makes this particular example slightly unusual is the way the carving pushes against the boundaries of the stone itself: the upper and side arms reach right to the edges of the slab, and instead of ending symmetrically, the bottom vertical drops below the central crossing to finish in a spike-like terminal.

The slab is modest in size, 0.66 metres tall, 0.24 metres wide, and between 7.5 and 9.5 centimetres thick, but its presence in this landscape carries considerable age. It sits six metres south of the west gable of a medieval church, placing it within a complex of early ecclesiastical remains at Raheen. Cross-slabs of this kind are among the simpler survivals of early Christian memorial or devotional practice in Ireland, stones marked with a cross and set into the ground, sometimes over a grave, sometimes as a boundary or focus for prayer, their exact original purpose often unclear after so many centuries. The cross potent form, with its distinctive capped arms, appears in early medieval contexts across Ireland and Britain, though it never achieved the ubiquity of the more familiar ringed high cross. Here at Raheen, the carving has been cut into the east face of the stone, the side that would catch the morning light and face towards Jerusalem in the orientation common to early Christian burials and sacred sites.