Where the others follow the familiar pattern of the Irish ringed high cross, with its characteristic wheel or halo of stone connecting the arms, this one has a blunt, hammer-headed profile and a shaft that does not taper toward the base. It is an anomaly in its own company, and since around 2006 it has stood indoors, moved into the sacristy adjoining the cathedral's chancel to protect it from further weathering.

Kilfenora once held six limestone high crosses, an unusual concentration even by the standards of early medieval Ireland. One was removed to Killaloe in 1821, leaving five behind. The North Cross, standing just over two metres tall and spanning 0.73 metres across the arms, was formerly positioned near the north-west corner of the graveyard. Its carving repays close attention. The east face carries a domed boss at the centre, with flattened roll mouldings along the edges that curl into spirals near the base of the head. The west face is more elaborately decorated across the head: the scholar Peter Harbison described the patterning as a 'field of Stafford knots', a knotwork motif that spreads across the arms. Below this sits a square panel of four interlinked knots in pointed triangular interlace, flanked at the top of the shaft by double spirals. The top of the cross has its own panel of pointed interlace, with a meander motif running alongside it. The sides are left plain. Writing in the mid-1950s, Liam de Paor observed that the cross stands apart from its Kilfenora neighbours not only in its ringless head but in its uniform shaft, both features that complicate any easy categorisation within the Irish high cross tradition.