It is about the height of a child, set slightly off-centre on a stepped plinth, and its tapered cap gives it a vaguely ceremonial air without quite explaining itself. What it is, or rather what it was, takes a moment to absorb: this is almost certainly the market cross of a town that no longer exists.

The antiquarian T. J. Westropp, writing in 1909, described it as a "neat octagonal pier" and recorded the local tradition that it served as the market cross for a long-vanished settlement. The marks on its surface were said to have been used to measure cloth and other goods sold at fairs. That tradition has not entirely faded. A more recent local account holds that the perimeter of the pier measured out a bandle, a unit of cloth length equivalent to six feet, or roughly 1.8 metres. The bandle was a common unit of measurement in Irish textile trading, and the idea that merchants would walk a length of cloth around the cross to confirm its measure is the kind of practical ingenuity that rarely makes it into the official record. The pillar itself, a mortared limestone shaft standing 1.21 metres tall, has been repointed but is otherwise well preserved. By 1977, Robinson's map was labelling it simply the "Market Stone", a name that quietly acknowledges its commercial past while sidestepping any ecclesiastical confusion.

The cross sits on the southern side of an east-west road, just to the north-northeast of a modern church dedicated to Saint Mochua, and on the western edge of a lane that leads down to a medieval church and graveyard. The remains of a settlement cluster lie about 85 metres to the south, and a holy well sits roughly 134 metres to the east. The geography of the place, a medieval church, a graveyard, a holy well, traces of a former settlement, and this lone measuring stone, suggests a community that was once considerably more substantial than anything visible today.