Yet even in its broken state, it carries enough detail to suggest what it was. The piece belongs to the tradition of the ringed cross, sometimes called a high cross, in which a circle connects the arms, a form that became one of the most recognisable expressions of early medieval Irish ecclesiastical craft. This particular fragment is perforated, meaning the spaces between the arms and the ring were cut through entirely rather than left as solid stone, a more demanding technique that appears on some of the finest surviving examples elsewhere in Ireland.

The cross was recorded in 1939 by Paterson, Gaffikin and Davies at Donagh graveyard in County Monaghan, where it presumably stood or lay among the older grave markers. One face carries a crucifixion scene flanked by two incomplete figures, worn enough that their identity is difficult to establish with confidence. The reverse is decorated with bosses, rounded projections carved in low relief, though the execution here is described as crude rather than refined, which may simply reflect the hand of a different carver, or the cross's relative distance from the major ecclesiastical workshops of the period. The fragment eventually left the graveyard and is now held by Monaghan County Museum, where it was accessioned in 2002.