Measuring roughly a metre both wide and tall, the piece is carved from granite and belongs to the ring or wheel type, in which a circular ring connects the four arms of the cross. Here the ring is solid and recessed rather than open, giving the head a compact, almost brooding quality. At the intersection of shaft and arms, small hollows have been cut, and at the very centre sit two small concentric circles. Two incised lines run around the outline of the whole, functioning as mouldings that sharpen and frame the form. It is a piece that rewards close attention rather than a long glance.

The cross head is kept inside St. Kevin's Church, part of the remarkable monastic complex at Glendalough, which was known historically as Sevenchurches, a name reflecting the number of early medieval ecclesiastical buildings scattered across the valley. The architectural historian Harold Leask described the piece in 1950, recording its dimensions and noting the precise decorative grammar of its surface. A drawing of the cross appeared earlier still in a report compiled by Robert Cochrane, published in 1925 as part of the Eightieth Annual Report of the Commissioners of Public Works in Ireland, which had surveyed the ecclesiastical remains at Glendalough in the years 1911 to 1912. That the cross head was already being formally documented over a century ago, and remains inside the church rather than in a museum case, gives it an unusual kind of continuity with the place it came from.