Held in the stone store at the visitor centre serving the Sevenchurches site, it is described simply as the head of a rough cross, no more than one and a half inches thick, its cross shape achieved not by carving a figure in relief but by cutting four notches into the edges of a flat slab. The result is a cross defined entirely by what has been removed rather than what remains.

Harold Leask, the architectural historian who catalogued Glendalough's national monuments in 1950, included this piece in his survey and reproduced a drawing of it, noting its unrefined character with the word "rude", used in the older sense of plain or roughly made. The technique itself is ancient and widespread in early Irish Christianity; by cutting notches at the four cardinal points of a slab, a craftsperson could produce a recognisable cross form without elaborate tools or extended labour. What makes this example worth pausing over is precisely its modesty. It belongs to a tradition of devotional objects made quickly and simply, perhaps for marking a grave or a sacred boundary, rather than as a display of ecclesiastical wealth or skill.