The upper portion, nearly two metres tall when intact, is cemented to the wall of St. Caimin's church, while the shaft stands outside near the round tower, slotted into a base that, according to the scholar R.A.S. Macalister, does not actually fit it. The base predates the current arrangement; the shaft was placed there by the Office of Public Works at some later point as a practical solution to having significant carved stonework lying around without a home.

Macalister, writing in 1916 and 1917, recorded the cross in considerable detail before and after its restoration with cement. A wheeled high cross, meaning one where the arms are enclosed within a carved ring or wheel, it once bore five bosses decorated with basketwork patterning, the spaces between filled with intricate interlacing. On the right arm end, a scene of Adam and Eve is still legible. On the left, a key pattern survives, but the figured panel on that arm end is broken and only partially remains. The surviving fragment shows what appears to be a figure walking and carrying a long staff, though, as Macalister noted plainly, the sculptor's intention can no longer be recovered. The shaft separately bore a plait design. Liam de Paor, writing in 2013, placed the cross's date with reasonable confidence in the ninth century, a period when Inis Cealtra was an active monastic site on one of Ireland's most significant early medieval pilgrimage routes.

Visitors reach Inis Cealtra by boat from Mountshannon on the Clare shore. The upper section of the cross is inside St. Caimin's church, set against the south wall of the nave roughly seven and a half metres from the east end, while the shaft and its mismatched base stand outside about five metres west of the round tower. The two parts of the same object, separated and reassembled in different spots, give the site an atmosphere of careful improvisation, of salvage carried out with good intentions and limited options.