The cross originally stood on the eastern shore of Illaunloughan, a small island off the Iveragh Peninsula, and is now held by the Office of Public Works under the National Monuments service. Its current location in the townland of Carrigafreaghane places it some distance from where it was first recorded, which gives it a quietly displaced quality, an object whose original context has been physically separated from the object itself.

The cross is modest in size, roughly 0.3 metres long and 0.13 metres wide, with a rounded head. Both arms are damaged, but retain traces of hollowed angles beneath them, a detail noted by Marshall and Walsh in their 2005 study of the site. Those hollowed angles, sometimes described as armpits in early medieval stone carving, are a feature associated with a particular tradition of Irish cross-making and help place the object within an early Christian context. Illaunloughan itself is known as an early monastic site, and small portable or low-set stone crosses of this kind are often associated with such island hermitages, where they may have marked boundaries, graves, or places of prayer.