It has been worked, somewhat roughly, into the form of a Latin cross, the type with a longer vertical shaft and a shorter horizontal bar. Those arms extend only fifteen centimetres to either side, giving the cross a distinctly squat, compressed appearance, and the stone itself is quite slender, just seven centimetres deep and twenty-two centimetres wide. The top tapers to an uneven point rather than a clean finish, which adds to the sense that this was carved with care but without elaborate precision.

The cross stands in a landscape where early Christian and pre-Christian traditions sit close together. Kilcatherine takes its name from a saint, and the ruined church nearby belongs to a pattern of small ecclesiastical enclosures found throughout this part of west Cork. Carved stone crosses of this kind, freestanding in or near graveyards, are a recurring feature of early medieval religious sites in Ireland. They served as focal points for prayer and burial, and their relative plainness was not unusual; many such stones were functional markers rather than showpieces. The roughness of the carving here may reflect local craft traditions or simply the hardness of the available stone.