These are not signs of recent vandalism so much as the accumulated wear of an object that was never monumental to begin with, measuring less than three-quarters of a metre tall. What remains is quietly affecting precisely because of that modesty, a plain stone marker in a place set aside for unbaptised infants.

The burial ground here is what was known in Ireland as a cillín, a category of informal unconsecrated ground where children who died before baptism were interred from the medieval period well into the twentieth century. Catholic doctrine historically excluded unbaptised infants from consecrated churchyards, so communities established their own small plots, often on marginal or liminal land. The cross at Lockstown is cut from granite and retains its basic form despite the damage: roughly 0.72 metres high, 0.42 metres at its widest, and only about nine centimetres thick, dimensions that suggest a slab rather than a sculptural object. A closely comparable cross stands approximately a hundred metres to the north, which implies that this particular corner of the low Wicklow ridge held some sustained local significance, perhaps serving more than one generation or more than one community.