It is a piece of an early Christian cross that once belonged to Sceilg Mhichíl, the extraordinary monastic island rising out of the sea some twelve kilometres off the tip of the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry, and its current address, a storage facility in Co. Kerry's inland county town, is as quiet and unremarkable as its original home was severe and exposed.

The fragment preserves part of the flat-topped head of the cross, along with a hollowed angle above a single projecting arm. Stone crosses of this type, carved from flat slabs and erected within or around early medieval monastic enclosures, served as markers of sacred space, boundaries, or burial grounds; the hollowed angle is a detail associated with the junction where the head meets the shaft, and its survival here gives some indication of the cross's original form even in its damaged state. Sceilg Mhichíl, known in English as Skellig Michael, was home to a community of monks who constructed a remarkable cluster of dry-stone beehive cells and oratories on its upper terraces, probably from around the sixth or seventh century onwards. The cross fragment would have been one of several such objects within that community's sacred landscape, now largely dispersed, damaged, or moved for safekeeping. It is currently held by the Office of Public Works at their National Monuments Depot in Killarney.