Something was once fixed there, a metal or carved plaque of some kind, and whatever it depicted or declared is now gone. The edges of the stone are bevelled, but otherwise the surface carries no inscription, no knotwork, no figural carving. What remains is a plain, serious object in a plain, serious place.

Illauntannig is the largest of the Magharee Islands, a scattered group lying off the northern tip of the peninsula that divides Brandon Bay from Tralee Bay in County Kerry. The cross forms part of a remarkably complete Early Christian monastic enclosure, enclosed within a cashel wall, which is a roughly circular defensive or boundary wall of dry-laid stone typical of such settlements. Within that enclosure sit two small oratories, three beehive huts (corbelled dry-stone cells used by monks as living quarters), a souterrain (an underground stone-lined passage, likely used for storage or refuge), three leachts, and a burial ground. A leacht is a low rectangular stone cairn associated with prayer and commemoration, often linked to a saint or to the memory of the dead. Alongside the cross, excavation and survey work has recovered three cross-slabs, a bullaun stone (a boulder with a cup-shaped hollow, associated with ritual use), a hand-bell, and fragments of five quern-stones used for grinding grain. A second bullaun stone sits at the edge of the sea roughly a hundred metres to the south of the enclosure. Field walls and a hut-site on the nearby promontory of Reennafardarrig, along with a reputed cross-inscribed boulder there, may also belong to the same monastic community.

The island is accessible only by boat, and the crossing from the peninsula can be unpredictable depending on weather and sea conditions. Once on land, the enclosure and its contents are concentrated enough that the cross, the leachts, and the beehive cells can all be seen in close proximity to one another. The middle leacht, on whose western side the cross stands, is the logical focal point, and it is worth looking closely at the perforation marks at the crossing before moving on.