The cross is cut in false relief, meaning the background has been chipped away to leave the design proud of the surface rather than incised into it, a technique that gives the symbol a quiet sculptural weight out of proportion to its modest dimensions. The mound itself, measuring roughly fourteen and a half metres across its longer axis, is a burial ground, and the pillar stands at its heart, planted firmly enough that small packing stones were wedged around its base to hold it upright.

The Maltese cross, with its four arms of equal length that flare outward at the tips, appears across early medieval Irish ecclesiastical sites, where it was used to mark sacred ground, commemorate the dead, or define the boundaries of a sanctuary. Here it occupies the upper portion of the stone's north-westerly face, roughly thirty-seven centimetres in diameter, and the slab itself is aligned on a west-north-west to east-south-east axis. At the south-western end of the same burial mound, a separate standing stone has been recorded, suggesting this corner of Kildun was organised with some deliberate spatial intention, the upright pillar and the standing stone together framing or anchoring the site. The schist from which the pillar is made is a metamorphic rock common to parts of the west of Ireland, durable and capable of holding carved detail across many centuries. The monument is a National Monument in state ownership.