That detail alone sets it apart from the conventions of early Irish Christian stonework, where the robed or shrouded Christ is the overwhelming norm. The cross is modest in scale, measuring just 0.68 metres high and 0.43 metres wide, with an oval head and short, stubby arms, chamfered on all edges on both faces. On the south-east face, the naked figure of Christ appears in relief; on the north-west face, a similar figure is rendered in a different technique, outlined by a broad incised line rather than carved proud of the surface. The base on which it sits is itself worth noting: a round granite boulder with a flat top and a socket cut into the centre to receive the cross shaft, which an earlier Ordnance Survey edition labelled, somewhat confusingly, as a cromlech, the old term for a megalithic portal tomb.

The cross was not always here. It originally stood in Kiltuc Church, an early ecclesiastical site in the area, before being re-erected around 1901 in the laneway running between Rathmichael and Shankill Castle. The boulder base, 0.7 metres in diameter and 0.3 metres high, has a cupmark on its south-east corner, a shallow circular depression of a kind associated with prehistoric rock art, which raises the possibility that the base itself predates the Christian monument it now supports by a considerable margin. Whether the cupmark was already present when the socket was cut, or whether the boulder was specifically chosen for reuse, is not recorded. The cross was documented by Ó hEailidhe in 1958 and by Turner in 1983, and compiled for the national record by Geraldine Stout and Padraig Clancy.

The laneway access point sits a little north of where the cross appears on the 1937 Ordnance Survey edition, so anyone relying on that map alone may find themselves looking in slightly the wrong place. The cross is on private garden ground, so access requires consideration and the usual courtesies. The carving is small and the stone weathers to a uniform grey, meaning the relief crucifixion on the south-east face shows best in low, raking light, the kind that comes in the morning or late afternoon rather than at midday. The incised figure on the north-west face is subtler still and rewards a slow look.