One side bears a Greek cross, a form in which all four arms are equal in length, rendered here not in straight incised lines but in circular arcs, the whole design enclosed within two concentric circular bands. Turn it over, and the other face presents something altogether different: the upper portion of a cross potent, a type in which each arm ends in a transverse bar, forming a shape sometimes compared to a crutch-head, with a square expansion at the centre where the arms meet.

The slab was documented by Harold Leask, the Irish architectural historian whose 1950 study of Glendalough remains a standard reference for the site. Leask described it as the rounded top of a possibly erect slab, suggesting it may once have stood upright, perhaps as a grave marker or a boundary stone within the monastic enclosure. The double-sided carving is what makes it quietly unusual. Cross-slabs of the early medieval period, common across Irish monastic sites, typically carry a single design on one face. Having two distinct cross types, executed in different styles, on opposite sides of the same stone raises questions that the surviving evidence does not fully answer. Whether the two faces were carved at the same time or represent different phases of use is not recorded.