The find came in 1990, when archaeological excavations were carried out ahead of buttressing works on Skeam Church, a medieval structure on Skeam West island off the west Cork coast. The stone was not the reason anyone was digging; it simply emerged in the process of trying to keep an old building upright.

Skeam West is one of the smaller inhabited islands scattered across Roaring Water Bay, an inlet known for its islands and its exposure to Atlantic weather. The church it sits beside is a modest early medieval or later medieval structure, the kind found on many Irish islands that once served small, largely self-sufficient communities. The cross-shaped stone found nearby belongs to a broader tradition of incised or shaped cross stones, objects that range from roughly worked slabs bearing simple linear crosses to more carefully dressed pieces intended for use as grave markers or devotional objects. Without more detail about its form and condition, it is difficult to say exactly where this example sits within that tradition, but the context of a church excavation gives it an obvious devotional association. The find was recorded by C. Cotter, whose report from 1991 remains the primary source for what was uncovered that year.