In a graveyard at Rathmore, County Kildare, a cross cut from green grit stands barely a metre tall at the head of a grave, its most distinctive feature being its anchor-shaped base, an unusual form that sets it apart from the more conventional grave markers around it. The cross is a Latin form, meaning the upper arm is shorter than the lower shaft, and at just seven centimetres thick it has a noticeably flat, almost blade-like profile.

Carved into the stone in Roman capitals is an inscription commemorating two people: Peirce Walsh and his wife Joan Malon. The dates 1686 and 1689 appear alongside their names, suggesting the cross was either erected across two separate occasions of loss or updated after the second death. The three-year gap between the dates is quietly affecting. Green grit, a coarse-grained sedimentary stone, was used for grave markers and architectural details across Leinster during this period, and its greenish hue weathers in ways that make older inscriptions harder to read over time, lending the stone a patina that belies the relative legibility of the lettering here. The pairing of a husband and wife on a single marker, with distinct dates, was not uncommon in late seventeenth-century Ireland, though the anchor-shaped base remains a more idiosyncratic choice, possibly a mason's signature flourish or a local stylistic convention now largely lost.