It is an easy thing to overlook, and that is precisely what makes it worth pausing over. The cross stands 1.1 metres above ground, with a shaft 0.26 metres wide and arms spanning 0.71 metres, modest dimensions that do nothing to prepare you for the story attached to it.

Local tradition holds that the cross marks the spot, or at least the memory, of a Spaniard of royal blood who drowned in Valentia Harbour during the Armada campaign. The Spanish Armada of 1588 was scattered by storms after its failed attempt to invade England, and a number of its ships were wrecked along the Irish coastline, from Antrim down to Kerry. Whether this particular cross was raised in the immediate aftermath of such a drowning, or added later as a community act of remembrance, is not recorded. What survives is the object itself and the reputation that has gathered around it over more than four centuries, the kind of oral tradition that tends to persist precisely because it carries the weight of something that once felt too significant to forget.