It is the shaft of a memorial cross, roughly half a metre tall, rectangular in section, with gently rounded corners and a shallow socket cut into its top where a now-missing upper section was once fixed. On one of its four faces, each framed by a raised panel, an inscription was carved in relief: a dedication beginning with the IHS monogram, a Christogram used widely in medieval and post-medieval Christian contexts, followed by the words recording that the cross was made by a man named James, with the surname or epithet rendered as something close to "Baccagh Coil." The top line of the text has been lost to damage, so the full reading cannot be recovered.

The word baccagh is an Irish term meaning lame, and the scholar H. S. Crawford, writing in 1920, proposed that it was carried in the name not as an insult but as a marker of identity, a way of distinguishing this particular James from others who might share his name. It was not unusual in early modern Ireland for a physical characteristic to pass into a person's name or byname in this way, functioning almost like a surname in communities where given names overlapped frequently. The cross itself was a memorial, erected to mark a death and record a maker, and the fact that the craftsman or commissioner chose to include this epithet alongside his Christian name gives the inscription an unusually personal quality. Bradley and Dunne, who documented the piece in 1992, recorded its dimensions carefully: 0.54 metres high, 0.25 metres wide, and 0.18 metres thick. A fragment of a wall plaque rests on the floor in front of it.

The fragment sits in the sacristy of the Dominican priory, a medieval foundation in Athenry that survives in substantial form. Access to the sacristy is not a given for casual visitors, but those with an interest in medieval stonework and who make enquiries at the church may be able to see the piece. It is easy to underestimate on first sight, a worn chunk of stone in a corner, but the inscription rewards close attention, particularly the careful lettering and the quiet, specific humanity of a lame man's name cut into stone some centuries ago.