The piece is a Latin ringed cross, meaning it has the characteristic ring connecting the arms, and it is cut from mica schist, a fine-grained metamorphic rock with a faintly glittering surface that occurs naturally in the Wicklow uplands. It measures roughly 87 centimetres tall and 38 centimetres across, and just 5 centimetres thick, so it is a relatively slender object. The shaft and head both flare outward slightly, and the spaces enclosed by the ring and the limbs of the cross are each sunk by about half a centimetre, giving the surface a low-relief quality rather than being entirely flat.

The cross was found at Reefert Church, one of the ruined early medieval churches within the Glendalough monastic complex in County Wicklow, a site associated with St Kevin and developed from at least the sixth century. On 21 May 1971 it was moved from Reefert to St Kevin's Church, another structure within the same complex. It was catalogued by Patrick Healy in his unpublished survey of ancient monuments at Glendalough, completed for the Office of Public Works in 1972, where it was assigned the number 203. One detail of the cross that suggests it was originally intended for installation rather than display is the tenon at the base of the shaft, a projecting tongue of stone 16 centimetres wide, designed to slot into a socket or base to hold it upright in the ground.

As of 2005, the cross was being held in the Stone Store at the Glendalough Visitor Centre, which places it off the open-air circuit of ruins and inside a managed storage or display facility. Visitors specifically interested in the object would need to check its current accessibility at the site, since pieces kept in store are not always on public view.