Measuring just thirty-one centimetres tall and seventeen centimetres wide, it was incorporated into the fabric of one of the island's Later Medieval shelters, its lower shaft already broken by the time it found this secondary use. The repurposing is quietly telling: the cross was not discarded but built in, which may reflect pragmatism, or reverence of a different kind, or simply the practical logic of an island community working with whatever stone was to hand.

The detail comes from the archaeological survey of the Iveragh Peninsula compiled by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan, published by Cork University Press in 1996. Church Island sits within that landscape of early Christian and medieval settlement for which the south Kerry coastline is remarkable, a place where small monastic communities established themselves on islands and promontories from the early medieval period onwards. The Later Medieval shelters on Church Island belong to a later phase of occupation on a site with deep religious associations, and it is within one of those structures that the cross was identified, tucked into the wall rather than displayed. Slate, the material here, is common to the region and was frequently used for carved objects as well as construction, which makes the transition from sacred artefact to building material less surprising than it might first appear.