Found within the main ecclesiastical complex on the north-east peak of the island, it is now held at the Office of Public Works National Monuments Depot in Killarney, far from the wind and salt spray where it originated.

The cross has a clearly defined head and two short, rounded arms, though one arm sits noticeably higher than the other, and both have gently rounded angles on their undersides. The shaft is missing entirely, which means the object as it survives is fragmentary, a head without a body. Whether it was ever mounted, carried, or displayed as part of the liturgical life of the monks who built their beehive cells into the cliff face at Skellig Michael is not known. What is certain is that it came from the island's principal monastic enclosure, a complex that dates to the early medieval period and represents one of the most austere expressions of Irish Christian monasticism, where communities of monks chose radical isolation as a form of devotion. The cross is tiny even by the standards of early Irish portable stonework, and its asymmetry, one arm raised above the other, gives it an almost informal quality, as though it were shaped by hand without a strict template.