Running along both the southern and northern banks of the River Owenagarney, the two linear structures of stone slabs are each roughly two to three metres wide and together span around a hundred metres in overall length, extending across the foreshore to meet the navigable channel.

The structures date from the post-medieval period, and their form, causeways of laid stone slabs running from dry land down through the tidal foreshore, reflects a practical approach to the particular challenges of the Shannon estuary, where wide, shallow intertidal zones can make direct access to deeper water difficult without some kind of engineered path. The term 'hard', which appears on the Admiralty chart alongside 'quay', refers to a firm, prepared landing surface rather than a formal quay wall; such hards were common wherever vessels needed a stable foreshore platform for loading, unloading, or simply grounding at low tide. Both the six-inch Ordnance Survey sheet and the Admiralty chart record the features, suggesting they were considered significant enough to navigators and cartographers to warrant marking, and that they remained in recognisable condition well into the period of systematic surveying.