One arm is missing, the head is damaged, and it measures less than a metre in height. There is nothing polished or monumental about it. It is a rough slab of stone that has endured the Atlantic weather for centuries, and its modesty is, in its own way, rather telling.

The cross was recorded in 1996 by archaeologists A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan as part of their survey of the Iveragh Peninsula. Their description is spare but precise: height 0.99 metres, width 0.35 metres, thickness 0.08 metres. It sits within the Monks' Graveyard, the burial ground associated with the early medieval monastic community that made its home on this extraordinary sea-stack off the coast of County Kerry. The monastery is thought to have been founded sometime in the sixth or seventh century, and the community that lived there occupied one of the most exposed and austere religious sites in early Christian Ireland. Crosses of this kind, rough-hewn and undecorated, are characteristic of early Irish monastic sites, where stone was worked with considerable effort but not necessarily with refinement. The loss of one arm and the damage to the head suggest centuries of exposure, perhaps also some physical disturbance over the long history of the site.