It is hexagonal in plan, measuring roughly 73 centimetres long and 66 centimetres wide, and its upper surface has been worked into a shallow sub-rectangular basin. That basin is the crux of the puzzle: it holds no drainage hole, which is unusual if the object was intended as a baptismal font, since fonts were typically designed to allow water to be emptied after use. The absence of that small but functional detail has left open the possibility that the stone served instead as a cross-base, a socketed plinth into which a standing stone cross would have been set.

Objects of this kind are not uncommon in early Irish ecclesiastical contexts, where the boundary between functional liturgical furniture and devotional sculpture could be blurry. A font, in its simplest form, is a vessel for holding the water used in baptism; a cross-base is structurally similar but serves as an anchor rather than a receptacle. The difficulty with this particular stone is that its basin is too shallow and irregular to function convincingly as either in the most clear-cut sense. It sits at a depth of between four and eleven centimetres, which suggests the hollowing was deliberate but modest. Whether the original cross or superstructure that might have explained its purpose has long since been lost, or whether the stone was always something of a hybrid form, is not known.