It is one of six surviving examples from a group of eight, the other two now destroyed, of a form known in Irish as leachtanna cuimhne, commemorative cairns or pillars traditionally erected at a place of significance to the deceased, often where the funeral procession paused to rest the coffin. This particular pier, measuring roughly 1.25 metres square and standing 2.4 metres tall, carries the Christogram IHS on its cross, a shorthand form of the name of Jesus used widely in Catholic devotional contexts from the medieval period onwards.

The south face of the pier holds two plaques commemorating a woman recorded as Margt O Flaherty Als Dirrane, dated 1830. The abbreviation "Als" is a contraction of "alias", a convention used in Irish records to link a woman's married name with her birth name, here connecting the O Flaherty and Dirrane families. The west and east faces carry plain, uninscribed plaques. The cluster of monuments along this road was first documented by Tim Robinson in 1980, whose meticulous mapping of Aran Island placenames and landscape features brought many such quiet survivals to wider attention. That six of the original eight remain, in a landscape subject to centuries of agricultural use and Atlantic weather, is itself notable.