It came originally from Sceilg Mhichíl, the dramatically remote island off the Kerry coast, where early Christian monks built one of Ireland's most extraordinary monastic settlements on a peak rising from the Atlantic. That a carved slab of this kind ended up in storage is not unusual; what makes this one worth pausing over is the precision and care of its decoration, made by hands working in conditions that most people today would find barely habitable.

The slab was recovered from the main ecclesiastical complex on the north-eastern peak of the island. It is modest in its dimensions, 0.53 metres long and 0.24 metres wide, tapering slightly towards one side of its lower end in a way that suggests it may once have been set upright in the ground as a grave marker. At its centre is an equal-armed Maltese cross, 0.12 metres across in each direction, formed not by incising a clean line but by a pockmarked groove, the surface of the stone pecked away in a dotted channel roughly a centimetre wide. This technique, sometimes called picked or pocked dressing, gives the cross a texture that catches the light differently depending on the angle, and it represents a level of deliberate craft that goes well beyond mere function. Cross-slabs of this kind were a common form of early medieval devotional and funerary object in Irish monasteries, simple upright stones carved with a cross to mark a burial or consecrate a space.

The slab is now in the care of the Office of Public Works at their National Monuments Depot in Killarney, which is not a public-facing visitor facility. The island from which it came, however, is accessible by boat from the Kerry coast during the summer months, and the monastic remains on its peak, where this stone once stood, are among the best-preserved early Christian sites anywhere in Europe.