In a graveyard at Ballintine, County Kildare, five Early Christian cross-slabs stand together, which is itself an unusual concentration. One of them, small and well preserved, is set directly into the earth, a reddish-brown conglomerate stone flecked with schist inclusions that catch the light differently depending on the angle. It measures just 0.8 metres in height, with a shaft 0.3 metres wide and a rounded head 0.4 metres in diameter, modest dimensions that make the precision of its carving all the more striking.

The cross itself is a Greek cross, meaning all four arms are of equal length, and it was made not by carving the cross in relief but by chiselling away the four quadrants between the arms, leaving the cross as the untouched surface of the stone. This subtractive technique, sometimes called incised or relief cross-cutting, was common in the Early Christian period in Ireland, roughly the fifth to twelfth centuries, when simple carved slabs marked graves and sacred enclosures across the country. The graveyard at Ballintine also contains the remains of a church site, suggesting this was once a place of some local religious significance, and the clustering of five such slabs in one location points to sustained use over a considerable period.