What remains of this cross measures just 22 centimetres high and 35 centimetres wide, barely thicker than a thumb at 5 centimetres. Its upper portion has broken away entirely, leaving only the lower section with part of the arms, their angles gently rounded rather than sharp-edged.

When A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan documented it in 1996 as part of their archaeological survey of the Iveragh Peninsula, they noted its poor state of preservation but recorded it nonetheless. That act of recording matters, because the fragment belongs to a place that was an active monastic community from at least the sixth or seventh century, when monks constructed their distinctive dry-stone beehive huts and oratories on this improbable outcrop some twelve kilometres off the Kerry coast. Stone crosses in early Irish monasteries served multiple functions, marking graves, delineating sacred space, and acting as focal points for prayer. This one, now reduced to a stump in the graveyard where the community buried its dead, is easy to overlook precisely because so much else on Skellig Michael demands attention.