The structure is a leacht cuimhne, a form of commemorative monument common in the west of Ireland, essentially a freestanding masonry pier erected at a significant location as a memorial rather than as a grave marker in the conventional sense. This one is almost square in plan, measuring roughly 1.25 metres by 1.15 metres at the base and standing just under two metres high, with traces of the lime rendering that once smoothed its surface still visible on the stonework. A cross at the top bears the letters IHS, the familiar Christogram derived from the Greek name for Jesus and widely used in Catholic devotional contexts from the medieval period onwards.

The two plaques on the north-east face name 'Michl Dirrane' and his wife 'Cathern Dirrane Als Coneely', the 'Als' being a contraction of 'alias', indicating that Cathern was known by her birth name Coneely as well as her married name, a common convention in Irish records of the period. The date 1817 places the monument in the early nineteenth century, a time when the Aran Islands remained a largely Irish-speaking community with its own distinct traditions of public commemoration. Tim Robinson, whose meticulous surveys of the Aran Islands began in the 1970s and produced some of the most detailed geographical and cultural documentation of the archipelago, noted the monument, and his observation forms the earliest recorded description of it.