The stone measures 1.73 metres in length and tapers slightly toward the base, with the lower corners cut obliquely rather than squared off, a subtle refinement that gives it a coffin-like outline without being crude about it. Its decoration, as described by the scholar R.A.S. Macalister in 1913, consists of a circular foliation where a cross-head would normally appear, combined with a plaited stem running down the shaft and ending in a clean horizontal termination. The marginal inscription, partially legible and partially uncertain, identifies the person commemorated as Mariota de Burgo, daughter of one Walter, with a title suggesting baronial rank. The de Burgos, a powerful Anglo-Norman family whose name is also rendered Burke, had deep roots in Connacht from the twelfth century onward, and by the early seventeenth century branches of the family were spread across Galway and Mayo. The phrase "preces fundite", meaning roughly "pour forth prayers", is a conventional appeal to those who read the stone to pray for the soul of the deceased, a formula common on Catholic memorial slabs of this period. The slab sits close to the south pier of the tower, in the chancel of the Dominican priory, a friary founded in Athenry in the thirteenth century and now maintained as a national monument.