Measuring just over half a metre tall and less than half a metre wide, it carries a set of serif letters, either T. S. M or T & M, cut in a confident hand typical of the late eighteenth or nineteenth century. Beneath those letters, almost easy to overlook, is a simple equal-armed cross incised so lightly and plainly that it seems to belong to an entirely different era.

In 2010, a graveyard survey conducted by Laurence Dunne brought this stone, catalogued as No. 95, to formal attention for the first time, along with thirteen other previously unrecorded cross-slabs in the same graveyard. Dunne's survey distinguished between the lettering and the cross below it, noting that the cross is more lightly and more simply executed than the inscription above, and that it appears to be earlier in date. Cross-slabs, in Irish archaeological terms, are stones on which a cross has been incised or carved, and they range in date from the early medieval period through to relatively recent centuries. The precise age of the Garfinny cross remains uncertain, but the contrast in technique between the two marks on the stone suggests that someone chose to add a name to a surface that was already, in some sense, consecrated. The sandstone itself is local, the kind of material that would have been readily available in the Dingle Peninsula area.

The graveyard at Garfinny, known in Irish as An Ghairfeanaigh, held fourteen such previously unrecorded stones in total when Dunne surveyed it, a reminder that even well-visited burial grounds can retain features that have not been formally documented until someone looks closely enough.