It measures just 23 centimetres high and 26 centimetres wide, barely larger than a sheet of paper, yet it carries the kind of carved detail that suggests it once marked something of real consequence. A demi-figure, meaning a human form rendered from the waist up, holds a plaque bearing the letters E.R. above a crown, the whole composition ornamented with scroll-work and knotwork in relief. The figure's head is missing, lost either to time or to whatever circumstances brought the stone away from its original setting.

The initials E.R. and a crown point almost certainly toward a royal cipher, the Latin form Elizabetha Regina or possibly Edwardus Rex depending on the period, though the style of the carving and its Athlone provenance might suggest the Tudor or early Stuart era, when the town served as a significant garrison and administrative crossing point on the Shannon. Athlone's strategic position made it a place where royal authority was regularly expressed in material form, through fortifications, inscriptions, and civic markers. A stone of this kind could have belonged to a building, a gateway, or a monument intended to signal loyalty or jurisdiction. Without knowing exactly where in the town it originated, those possibilities remain open. The stone is recorded in Bradley et al. (1985), which places it firmly in the scholarly literature on Irish medieval and early modern inscriptions, but its precise original location appears not to have been documented.