The label was wrong, but the confusion is telling. The base is itself an ancient thing: a round granite boulder with a flat top and a socket carved into its centre to receive the cross shaft. On one corner of that boulder is a cupmark, a shallow circular depression of the kind associated with prehistoric stone carving. Whatever the cross's medieval origins, it has ended up resting on something considerably older.

The cross itself is modest in scale, measuring 0.68 metres high and 0.43 metres wide, with an oval head and short arms, both faces chamfered all around, giving it a slightly softened, bevelled edge. It originally stood at Kiltuc Church before being re-erected around 1901 at its current position, in a laneway between Rathmichael and Shankill Castle. The more remarkable detail is what is carved on it. The south-east face carries a crucifixion scene in relief, and the figure depicted is naked. The north-west face shows a similar figure, though here it is rendered differently, outlined by a broad incised line rather than modelled in relief. Scholars including Ó hEailidhe, writing in 1958, and Turner in 1983 have noted and documented the cross, situating it within a wider tradition of early Irish stone carving in the Dublin and Wicklow area.

Finding it takes a little patience. The cross's position as recorded on the 1937 Ordnance Survey edition does not quite match where it actually stands; the laneway access point lies to the north of the marked spot. The cross stands at the end of a garden, so discretion and awareness of private property are sensible. The cupmark on the boulder base is easy to miss, tucked onto the south-east corner, but worth looking for once you are oriented. There is no interpretive signage, no fencing, no formal presentation of any kind, which gives the site an unmediated quality that more visited monuments rarely retain.