They are known collectively as Roilig Mhuire, meaning Mary's Cemetery or burial ground, and they form one of the penitential stations along the Turas, the traditional pilgrimage circuit of the mountain. The Turas is a prescribed series of stops, prayers, and physical acts of devotion that pilgrims have followed on Croagh Patrick for centuries, and Roilig Mhuire is among the oldest and most physically substantial of its waypoints.

The central cairn is an oval mound of loose stones, roughly 6.8 metres along its north-west to south-east axis and 5.3 metres across, rising to about 1.8 metres in height. Its two companions sit just three metres to the south-west and north-east respectively, the three together forming a tight cluster within their enclosure. The outer surface of each cairn is made up of small loose stones, and the material spread around each base is thought to result from a combination of natural slippage and the accumulated effect of pilgrims adding stones over generations. The act of placing a stone on a sacred cairn is a long-standing devotional gesture in Ireland, and the gradual accretion visible here is a direct physical record of that repeated practice. Each visit leaves a small, anonymous deposit on the structure, so the cairns as they stand today are, in part, an archive of the people who have climbed this mountain and paused here.

The site sits on the approach to the summit rather than at the top, which means it is encountered during the ascent, often by pilgrims already barefoot on the quartzite scree in keeping with traditional practice. The enclosure that contains the three cairns is a distinct feature worth noting once you reach that section of the western shoulder, separating Roilig Mhuire from the surrounding slope and giving the station a sense of defined, intentional space on an otherwise open mountainside.