It lies flat, face to the sky, its arms slightly projecting in the manner of early Irish stonework and its head broken. The cross was recorded upright as recently as 1996, which means its fall is relatively recent history, a quiet collapse in one of the most dramatic monastic settings in Ireland.

When archaeologists Aidan O'Sullivan and Jerry Sheehan documented the cross in 1996, it measured just 0.34 metres high, 0.31 metres wide, and 0.04 metres thick, a modest slab by any standard. Skellig Michael, the larger of the two Skellig islands off the tip of the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry, was home to an early Christian monastery whose origins are generally placed in the sixth or seventh century. The monks' graveyard where this cross sits is part of that monastic complex, a cluster of dry-stone beehive cells and oratories perched on a ledge some 180 metres above sea level. Small stone crosses of this type, sometimes called incised or slab crosses, were commonly used throughout early Irish monasticism to mark graves or sacred ground, and their simplicity reflects both the austere conditions of island life and the broader aesthetic of the period.

Visitors who reach the island, access is seasonal and regulated, and the boat crossing from Portmagee or Ballinskelligs is weather-dependent, will find the monks' graveyard near the main monastic enclosure. The prostrate cross is easy to overlook among the other stones and grave markers scattered across the site, but its dimensions alone make it worth pausing over. Something so small, lying quietly broken after centuries of standing, carries a different kind of weight than the more imposing features around it.