The cross, nearly a metre long and carved from a single slab just seven centimetres thick, originated on Sceilg Mhichíl, the pyramid of rock rising from the sea off the Kerry coast where early medieval monks established a community of almost incomprehensible austerity. It is now held at the National Monuments Depot in Killarney, in the care of the Office of Public Works, removed from its original setting and catalogued rather than displayed.

The cross itself is a fairly complete example of an early Irish slab cross. It has a rounded head, an intact shaft, and the rounded stumps of two arms, with rounded angles where the arms once met the head, a form sometimes described as a ringed or transitional type that sits somewhere between a simple incised slab and the fully developed high cross. The piece measures 0.98 metres in length and 0.32 metres in width. Its removal from Sceilg Mhichíl, a UNESCO World Heritage Site known for its sixth-century monastery clinging to ledges cut into the rock face, was presumably done to preserve it, since the exposed summit environment is extraordinarily harsh and has worn down or displaced many of the island's smaller carved stones over the centuries.