Somewhere beneath the soil of a graveyard in Rathmore, County Kildare, a granite cross lies mostly hidden, its upper portion barely breaking the surface. What makes it quietly compelling is not simply its age but its condition of almost-disappearance, a worked stone that has been slowly swallowed by the ground around it, leaving only enough visible to hint at what is underneath.

The cross came to attention through a survey of the graveyard carried out by Brian McCabe of the Naas Local History Group. His findings described it as substantially buried, roughly hewn, and tapering, cut from granite in a style that suggests considerable antiquity. A short distance away, a possible cross-base has also been identified, which may originally have held the cross upright. If the two are related, it would suggest the cross was once a freestanding monument, the kind used in early medieval Ireland to mark sacred ground or significant burials, before it fell, or was laid down, and the earth gradually rose around it.