On its east face, a Latin cross has been incised with expanded or bar terminals, meaning the arms of the cross flare outward at their ends rather than finishing in a plain cut. It is a quiet, deliberate mark, the kind of thing that rewarded close looking in its own time and still does.

Kilmalkedar, known in Irish as Cill Maoilchéadair, sits at the foot of the western slopes of Reenconnell hill, sheltered on its northern and southern sides by spurs of the same ridge, which rises to around 907 feet at its peak to the north-east. The site looks out towards Smerwick Harbour and forms part of a wider Early Christian and medieval ecclesiastical complex, one of the more significant concentrations of early religious remains in Munster. The carved stone belongs to that long tradition of marking sacred space with incised crosses, a practice found across early medieval Ireland and particularly associated with pilgrimage routes and monastic enclosures. The form of the cross on this stone, with its flared terminals, appears in Irish ecclesiastical carving from roughly the sixth century onward, though the precise date of this individual piece is not recorded.