The front presents a circular band carved in relief with a plain zigzag pattern, above which sits a gable-form ornament, with a small rebate running around the edge and descending along the shaft on either side of a lattice divided into six plain compartments. Flip it over, so to speak, and the mood changes entirely. The back bears a Greek cross, the kind with four equal arms, formed from four bands mitred together at the centre and finishing in crescent-shaped ends. That the carvers chose such distinct schemes for each face, one almost textile in feel, the other strictly geometric, gives the piece an unusual internal tension for something not much more than a foot across at its thickest point.

The cross was documented by Harold Leask, the Irish architectural historian whose 1950 survey of Glendalough remains a foundational reference for the site. Leask measured the slab at eleven inches, roughly 0.28 metres, in thickness, and noted both the tapering of the head and arms and the way the edge rebate continues a short distance down the shaft below the break. Sevenchurches is the old name for the monastic complex at Glendalough, in the Wicklow Mountains, a valley settlement founded in the sixth century and associated with St Kevin. The name reflects the number of early medieval church buildings that survive there in various states of preservation, though the term had already become historical by the time antiquarians began cataloguing the site systematically. This cross, now kept inside rather than left to weather, is one of several carved stones that have been gathered into storage to protect them from further deterioration.