It goes by at least two names: scholar Peter Harbison, writing in 1992, called it the East Cross, while Helen Roe, in her 1976 study, preferred the North or Tall Cross. The disagreement over naming is minor, but it hints at something genuine about the monument, which is that it rewards close looking and resists easy summary.

The cross is associated with the early medieval monastery of Kilkieran, a site whose high crosses Roe dated to the eighth century, placing them among the earlier examples of a form that would become one of the most distinctive expressions of Irish ecclesiastical art. High crosses of this period typically served as focal points for prayer and procession within monastic enclosures. This one stands in a round, undecorated base and has its corners finished with rope-moulding, a carved twist that gives the edges a plaited appearance. The east face is the more elaborately worked of the two principal faces. The lower shaft carries a sunken vertical panel, above which the stone is divided into small square and rectangular fields bearing ornamentation in light relief, much of it now eroded. The lowest of these panels has a round boss set within a square frame, with what appear to be L-shaped corner fields that Harbison interpreted as imitations of enamel decoration, the kind of metalwork finish familiar from contemporaneous Irish ecclesiastical objects. Below the head of the cross, two raised Greek crosses flank a crossing panel carved with a St Andrew's cross, its terminals expanding into semi-circular forms. The west face also has a sunken lower panel, and the area around the arms carries semi-circular indentations. The arms themselves project slightly and are carved as two separate panels joined by a pair of horizontal bands at the centre. Whether the sides ever carried decoration is uncertain; erosion may have removed whatever was there.

The cross stands to the east of the ruined church in Kilkieran graveyard, and to the northeast of a second high cross at the site, known as the South Cross. The graveyard remains accessible, and the grouping of monuments there, including the church remains and multiple crosses, gives a clearer sense of the original monastic landscape than any single monument could alone.