It is the most westerly of a cluster of four such structures standing in close proximity, and it is this grouping, as much as any single monument, that makes the spot quietly arresting. These are leachtanna cuimhne, roadside memorial pillars of a kind once raised to mark the spot where a person died or to serve as a focus for prayers on behalf of the dead. The form is distinct from a gravestone: it belongs to the road, not the churchyard.

The south-western face of this particular structure carries two stone plaques. Both commemorate members of the same family: one records a Patk O Donnell, the other his wife, with dates of 1848 or 1849 and 1863. The first of those dates falls in the worst years of the Great Famine, though the notes do not specify the circumstances of either death. What the plaques do confirm is that someone, presumably family or neighbours, had the means and the will to erect a substantial mortared monument at a time of considerable hardship, and then to return to it fourteen or fifteen years later to add a second inscription. Tim Robinson, whose meticulous documentation of the Aran Islands underlies much of what is known about such sites, recorded the monument in 1980.