They are close enough to seem paired, yet each is a distinct structure, and the relationship between them remains unexplained. The western one is a leacht cuimhne, a commemorative cairn or memorial pillar of a type found across the west of Ireland, here taking the form of a square mortared pier measuring roughly 1.2 metres on each side and standing 2.35 metres tall, finished with a cross at its summit.

On the southern face of the pier, two plaques record the name Martin O Flaherty, with a date that appears to be somewhere in the mid-1840s, most likely 1845 or 1848. The uncertainty in the date is significant in its own quiet way. The mid-1840s on the Aran Islands, as across the west of Ireland generally, coincided with the onset of the Great Famine, and a commemorative monument erected at that moment, for a man bearing one of Connacht's most prominent Gaelic surnames, carries a particular weight of context even when the specific circumstances of his death go unrecorded. The O Flaherty family had deep roots across Galway and the islands, though what connection this Martin held to the locality is not documented here. The existence of a near-identical monument just 1.3 metres to the east adds a further puzzle. Whether the two structures commemorate separate individuals, or whether one was erected in deliberate relation to the other, is not known.