The cross had been maliciously broken at some point before the mid-nineteenth century, and in 1858 it was reassembled, according to the historian Carrigan writing in 1905, by a blind mechanic from Faugheen named Paddy Laurence, and reassembled, Carrigan noted, in an admirable manner. That a sightless craftsman carried out what must have been a demanding structural repair on a piece of carved medieval stonework is the kind of detail that tends to get swallowed by the broader record.

The cross belongs to a group associated with the early medieval monastery of Kilkieran, for which an eighth-century date has been proposed by the scholar Helen Roe. High crosses of this period, free-standing stone crosses often ringed and elaborately carved, were a distinctively Irish and Scottish form, used variously as preaching stations, boundary markers, and focal points for devotion. This particular example, which different scholars have labelled the South Cross and the East Cross depending on their frame of reference, stands southwest of the tallest cross in the graveyard. It is made from sandstone and measures just under two metres in height, with arms spanning just over a metre. The cross has raised flat mouldings along its edges and a flat-topped boss at the centre, though its ring carries no moulding. It is similar in form to another cross in the same group, though noticeably plainer. At the top sits a beehive-shaped capstone with a recessed horizontal band around its base, a feature that gives the whole structure an unusual, almost architectural finish.

Kilkieran graveyard remains an active site and the crosses stand within it, accessible to visitors who make their way to this part of south Kilkenny. The graveyard contains several crosses from the same early medieval group, each with its own character, and taken together they give a reasonable sense of what a modest but significant monastic site of the period might have looked like.