On one face, two serpents bite each other's jaws beneath a central boss; on another, a horseman chases a stag with a dog riding on the stag's back. On the south arm, Noah's Ark appears as a semi-circular hull with a steering oar and four figures below deck, and a dove with oversized claws perches above them, apparently holding an olive branch. The west face shows what has been interpreted, through comparison with a mosaic in St. Mark's Basilica in Venice, as God blessing the seventh day of creation. The same face carries a worn inscription at the base of the shaft that reads, according to Macalister, 'ÓR DO MAELSECHNAILL', meaning 'Prayer for Maelsechnall'. Whether that Maelsechnall was the intended recipient of the cross, or simply a patron who paid for it, is unknown.

The site at Killamery sits on raised ground overlooking a broad plain, with the land dropping sharply to the south into a small valley where St. Nicholas's holy well lies just ten metres from the hillock. According to the historian Carrigan, writing in 1905, a monastery here was founded by St. Gobán Fionn early in the seventh century; his feast day falls on the sixth of December. The Annals of the Four Masters record the death of an abbot, Domhnall son of Niall, in 1004, which gives some sense of the community's continuity over centuries. The high cross itself, an open-ringed type with a ring connecting the arms to the shaft, is dated by Edwards to the end of the eighth or the first half of the ninth century. Beyond the cross, the site still holds two cross-slabs, a further stone cross, the remains of a church, and two bullaun stones, which are boulders with hollowed depressions, possibly used for grinding or for collecting water regarded as curative.

The cross stands just over 2.56 metres to the top of the shaft, with a roof-cap adding another thirty centimetres. A heavy rope-like moulding runs around the edges of the cross and terminates at a projecting plinth at the shaft's base. Every face rewards close attention: the carving includes interlace, marigold patterns, fretwork, embracing figures, a chariot procession, and scenes from both the Old and New Testaments, many of which resist definitive identification even after sustained scholarly analysis. The north arm alone carries panels that have been read alternately as Christ and John the Baptist, Jacob wrestling with an angel, the temptation of St. Anthony, and David killing a lion. That ambiguity is not a failing of the carving; it is a quality of early medieval imagery that was designed to hold multiple readings at once.