It is a modest object, less than half a metre tall in total, but its construction is quietly particular: a gable-shaped base, meaning the upper portion is cut to a pointed or ridged profile rather than left flat, sits beneath a hexagonal cross stem with a square socket at its top, where the cross itself would once have been seated.

The piece is thought to originate from an 18th or 19th-century church, which would make it relatively recent by the standards of Irish ecclesiastical stonework, though the precise church it came from is not recorded. What is more striking is where it ended up. Holy wells, sites of pre-Christian and early Christian veneration where spring water was believed to carry curative or spiritual properties, have accumulated objects and offerings across centuries, and it is not unusual to find fragments of religious architecture pressed into service at them. The cross base at Croaghaun fits that pattern: a piece of cut stone from a formal church building, now affixed to a wall at a site with a far older relationship to local devotion.