It consists of a wooden tubular staff lined with copper-alloy plates; embellished with silver, gold, niello and glass; and capped by a crook with a decorative openwork crest.

[1] The inscriptions on the upper knope record that it was built by "Nechtain the craftsman" and commissioned by Niall mac Meic Aeducain, bishop of Lismore (d. 1113).

[4] The crozier is 115 cm high[5] and built from a wooden core, with added copper-alloy plates containing silver, gold, niello and glass.

According to art historian Griffin Murray, "there seems to be no other explanation for the presence of these rings except to produce this noise, which may point to the importance of sound in the use of crosiers in Christian rituals in early medieval Ireland".

The reliquary within the drop is slightly larger (width: 22mm, length: 18mm, depth: 15mm) and comprises a single sheet of copper-alloy folded into a box containing "tiny slivers of wood".

[12] A piece of woven linen cloth measuring 40mm x 23mm was also found during the opening of the crook, and may have been a brandeum, i.e. placed to represent the Holy shroud.

[20][21] Nechtain placed the inscriptions in a very narrow space and so had to use abbreviations, and in some instances omitted letters (for example "Niall" is spelled with only one "l", and "Lasandernad" is missing the central "d").

[22] Based on style and technique, Nechtain is further associated with the early 12th-century Small's Reef sword guard, now in the National Museum of Wales; the Cross of Cloyne, now at the NMI; and a drinking-horn terminal, now in County Carlow.

A number of other significant Irish insular period objects were found in this way: the Stowe Missal (Tipperary) was also found in a walled-up door, an early medieval altar plate was discovered in a gable at the nunnery of St. Catherine d'Conyl in County Limerick, while the Sheephouse hoard had been hidden in a quarry near Mellifont Abbey, County Louth.