It is not large, rising just over a metre and a third above the ground, and its decoration is faint enough that it can be easy to miss entirely. What it carries, incised so lightly into the surface that the lines seem almost reluctant, is an outlined Latin cross, its head apparently once pointed at the top, giving the whole form a subtly unusual profile among the more familiar rounded or equal-armed crosses of the site.

The slab itself is mica schist, a metamorphic rock with a faintly glittering, layered quality, slightly tapered in shape and relatively thin at around eight centimetres. It was catalogued by Patrick Healy in a 1972 unpublished Office of Public Works survey of ancient monuments at Glendalough, where it appears as item number 167, described as standing against the north wall of the Priest's House. The Priest's House is itself a Romanesque structure within the monastic enclosure at Glendalough, the valley in County Wicklow long associated with St Kevin and one of the most significant early Christian sites in Ireland. The cross-slab belongs to a broader tradition of simply incised memorial or devotional stones that are found across early medieval Irish ecclesiastical sites, marking graves or serving as focus points for prayer, though the precise original purpose of this particular example is not recorded.

The slab sits immediately outside the north wall of the Priest's House, just west of centre. Given the density of monuments within the Glendalough enclosure, it is the kind of detail that rewards a slower circuit of the buildings rather than a direct route between the better-known tower and cathedral.