Originally part of what may have been a cross-inscribed pillar, the piece now functions as a grave-marker, partly sunk into the earth, its earlier identity half-concealed by its later role. That kind of repurposing is not unusual in Irish ecclesiastical landscapes, where old carved stones were routinely borrowed for new burials when their original context had faded, but it does mean that something potentially significant sits in the ground at an angle, doing quiet duty for the dead.

The fragment measures 0.78 metres in length, 0.38 metres wide, and just 0.11 metres thick, and its flat face carries a pair of parallel incised lines forming a two-line Latin cross, a design in which the arms and shaft of the cross are rendered as double lines rather than a single outline. On either side of the stone there is a large raised boss, a rounded protrusion of the kind found on early Christian carved stonework across Ireland. The site lies to the north of the early ecclesiastical enclosure known as Monasterkieran, and this pillar fragment is not alone in its type: several other cross-inscribed pillars and cross-slabs have been recorded in the immediate vicinity, suggesting that this corner of Galway was once home to a concentration of carved early Christian stonework, the full original arrangement of which is no longer recoverable. The fragment was recorded by Higgins in 1987.