It is a sandstone remnant, just 0.63 metres tall, and it arrived in its current location after a journey that began in a graveyard in County Meath, the details of which have largely been lost to time. What survives is less than half of what once existed, yet even in its damaged state it carries enough detail to reward careful attention.

The piece is almost certainly the cross head described by William Wilde in 1857, who recorded it as having been dug up during grave-digging at the old churchyard of Donoughmore, near Navan, in County Meath. High crosses, which are large free-standing stone crosses typically featuring a distinctive ring connecting the arms, were produced in Ireland from roughly the eighth century onwards, often elaborately carved with scriptural scenes or abstract ornament. This example, as described by the archaeologist Peter Harbison in 1992, retains on its first face a knot of interlace at the centre that spreads outward into the arms and shaft, a common decorative device of early medieval Irish stonework. More arresting is what occupies the upper limb: the interlace resolves itself into a human figure holding up a book, a detail that suggests a figure of an evangelist or scholar, though the damage makes certainty impossible. The lower section of the ring carries a fret pattern, while the upper section shows an animal emerging above and below from a central spiral coil. The second face of the cross was roughly dressed at some point and bears no sculpture at all.

Because the notes record only that the piece is now held somewhere in Dublin South City, a visitor hoping to examine it would need to establish its precise current location before making any effort to find it. The fragment is not large, and given its history of displacement and the damage it has sustained, it is the kind of object that benefits from knowing what to look for in advance. The interlace figure on the upper limb, small and worn as it is, is the detail worth finding.