The request is a familiar one from the period: a prayer for the soul of a named friar. What makes the cross worth pausing over is the combination of its form and its function, fixed into the fabric of the friary entrance so that anyone entering or leaving would pass beneath it and, in theory, comply.

The cross is cruciform, with a solid disc at the junction of its arms and shaft, a form sometimes called a ringed or wheel cross, though here the ring is filled rather than open. It sits on an octagonal base, a detail that suggests some care in its cutting. The inscription is distributed across the arms and central disc and reads, with some abbreviation typical of the period: HOC SIGN CRV, ORATE PRO FRATRE THOMAS, ERIT 1635 CVIER. Roughly translated, this asks the reader to pray for Brother Thomas, with the date 1635 making it a product of the later years of the Irish Franciscan friaries, many of which continued to function in difficult circumstances well into the seventeenth century despite the suppressions that had begun under Henry VIII. The abbreviated words suggest either a stone cutter working within tight constraints of space, or the shorthand conventions common to ecclesiastical Latin of the time. The identity of Frater Thomas beyond his name and his community remains unknown.