A ringed cross, sometimes called a Celtic cross in popular usage, is simply a cross whose arms are connected by a circle; here, the design is carved in double-grooved lines cut roughly five millimetres deep into the dressed stone surface. What catches the eye, once you know to look, is a small imperfection: one of the two vertical lines of the cross is slightly out of alignment with the stem below it. The carver was working carefully, but not quite perfectly.

The slab was discovered in 1975 and subsequently described by Fanning and Ó Corráin, who noted its dimensions at 80 centimetres long, 40 centimetres wide, and 15 centimetres thick. Because both the upper and lower ends are broken away, the top of the ringed cross and the base of the stem are missing entirely. However, the high, rounded right-hand corner of the stone survives undamaged, and scholars have suggested this indicates the stone originally had either a semi-circular or gabled top. The slab was not made as a cross-slab from the outset; it appears to have been reused for that purpose, possibly during the tenth or eleventh century, around the same time as the construction of the first stone church at Ratass. It shares the site with an ogham stone, one of the upright pillars incised with the early Irish ogham script that date mainly from the fifth and sixth centuries, and both stones have been re-erected and secured against the internal north wall of the nave of the church. The cross grooving on the slab closely resembles the cross carving added to that ogham stone, suggesting the two pieces may have been worked by the same hand, or at least in the same tradition.

Both stones now stand together along the nave's north wall, which means a visit to the church interior is the only way to see them properly. The slab's purple-red sandstone is the same material used throughout the area, but its dressed surface and rounded side edges mark it out as something that was shaped with deliberate care, even if whoever carved the cross was working without a perfectly steady hand.