The fragment, roughly 65 centimetres square and only about 7.5 centimetres thick, preserves the ringed head and part of the shaft of an early Christian cross, carved in two-line outline. Along the right-hand side of the shaft, a worn inscription begins with the letters OR DO T, the opening of a formulaic Latin request, "pray for", followed by the initial or partial name of whoever commissioned the stone. The rest is gone.

Cross-slabs of this type are among the most personal objects to survive from early medieval Ireland, small carved stones that recorded individuals by name and asked future generations to pray for their souls. The formula OR DO, short for oroit do, appears on dozens of early Christian monuments across the country, usually accompanying a personal name. Here, only the first letter or fragment of that name remains, read tentatively as T by scholar John Sheehan. The slab has been placed against the inner face of the north wall of the nave of St Finan's church, a building associated with the monastic site on the island. Church Island sits in Lough Currane near Waterville, and the remains there include the church itself, a beehive cell, and other early ecclesiastical features that speak to a community of monks living and working in this lake-bound setting many centuries ago. The cross-slab, now a fragment, was once a complete and deliberate act of commemoration, someone's name cut in stone so that prayers might follow them beyond death.