Only the upper portion made the journey here; the granite base of the original cross remains behind the eastern gable of a ruined medieval church several miles away in Aughkiletaun townland, the two halves of the same monument quietly separated for over two centuries.

According to Grattan Bellew, writing in 1961, it was a Father Broughal who removed the upper section in 1820 and had it erected in the churchyard at Graiguenamanagh, where it now rests on a modern replacement base. The cross itself, standing 1.68 metres high with a span of 0.92 metres, has a solid, imperforate ringed head, the ring being a defining feature of the Irish high cross tradition. Roll-mouldings run along its edges, and the north and south sides are left plain. It is the east and west faces that carry the carving. On the east, the shaft bears two panels of interlace, that characteristically knotted geometric ornament common to early medieval stonework, and the head shows a crucifixion: Christ in a loin-cloth, with raised mouldings marking the ends of the arms and top of the cross in place of actual nails, and two flanking figures, possibly Stephaton and Longinus, the soldier and the sponge-bearer of the Passion narrative, or possibly Mary and John. A knot of interlace appears above Christ's head, and above that a panel that is now broken. The west face is considerably more worn, but appears to repeat the crucifixion theme, with Christ robed only to the knees, two figures at his sides whose identities are again ambiguous, and what may be angels flanking his head. Peter Harbison, who catalogued the cross in 1992, noted a boss on Christ's abdomen on this face, a detail that resists easy interpretation, and observed that the abbreviated robe rules out reading the figure as the Risen Christ.

The cross stands within the graveyard surrounding Duiske Abbey, the restored Cistercian church in the centre of Graiguenamanagh town. Visitors moving through the churchyard will find it there, sharing the space with the Ballyogan high cross, another medieval survivor. For anyone interested in the cross's origins, the ruined church at Aughkiletaun, with its lone eastern gable and orphaned granite base, offers a quieter counterpoint a short distance away.