The two halves of the same object now occupy different functions metres apart, which is a strange kind of fragmentation for something that was carved to stand whole.

The cross itself belongs to the ringhead type, in which the arms are enclosed within a solid circular ring of stone. Harold Leask, writing in 1950, described it in precise terms: just under three feet eight inches high, with a complete solid ring, short projecting arms, and a circular band in shallow relief enclosing curved, equal arms. The shaft tapers slightly and has what Leask called an entasis, a very gentle convex swelling along its length borrowed from classical column design, here applied almost invisibly. The edges of the shaft are rebated, meaning they are cut back in a shallow step. When it stood in situ it was positioned east of the chancel of one of the ecclesiastical structures at Glendalough, the great monastic valley in County Wicklow that functioned as a major centre of early Christian learning and pilgrimage. Robert Cochrane documented the cross in drawings included in a 1925 publication drawing on the Commissioners of Public Works annual report for 1911 to 1912, and those drawings show the cross upright on its base with walling to either side, giving a sense of how it once sat within a built context.

The Discovery Programme subsequently produced a 3D digital model of the cross, which offers a way to examine the carving in detail that the display case does not always allow. For those visiting Glendalough, the cross inside the visitor centre is easy to overlook against the larger drama of the valley and the round tower, but the separation of base and cross, one indoors and one outside serving as a replica's foundation, makes it worth pausing over as an object with an unexpectedly layered afterlife.