Over four metres tall and spanning just over a metre across its arms, it was brought to Killaloe in 1821 from Kilfenora, where it had stood in the same field as the West Cross, one of that village's celebrated collection of early medieval stone crosses. A Latin inscription tablet, inserted halfway up the shaft, records the transplant in measured ecclesiastical prose: the cross had fallen into decay in the field at Kilfenora, and the bishop arranged for it to be raised here at Killaloe rather than allow it to be lost entirely to neglect and time.

The bishop responsible was Dr. Mant, who held the see of Killaloe and described himself in the inscription as a devotee of ecclesiastical antiquity. His intervention was well-intentioned, though it means the cross now stands detached from the landscape and monastic context that would have originally framed it. High crosses of this type, large free-standing carved stone monuments associated with early Irish Christianity, were typically focal points of monastic enclosures, used for preaching, procession, or marking sacred ground. This one has an imperforate head, meaning the ring that connects the arms is solid rather than pierced through, and the carving on its east face is still readable. The crucified Christ appears in a long robe, arms outstretched, surrounded by knotted interlace patterns of both single and double strands, with four animal heads emerging from a whirl beneath his left arm. The west face is covered with interlace running from the upper shaft across the arms and head, though the ring segments there are plain. A panel of fretwork sits at the top of the otherwise undecorated shaft.

The cross can be seen inside Saint Flannan's Cathedral in Killaloe, a small town on the southern tip of Lough Derg. The cathedral itself is a medieval structure, and the cross, displaced from its original Kilfenora field, now shares the interior with a rare Romanesque doorway and other early ecclesiastical stonework, making the nave an unexpectedly dense repository of early Irish Christian material.