It measures just over two metres in length and tapers slightly from head to foot, the kind of carved stone coffin that would once have been reserved for someone of considerable standing. The lower portion has been broken in two at some point and subsequently repaired, the sides are damaged, and the top corner at the right side of the head end is missing. What makes it particularly unusual, though, is the internal drainage system worked into the stone itself: a soakage hole, later enlarged, with a short channel running into it, designed to carry away fluids from the decomposing body. It is a detail that speaks plainly to the medieval understanding of burial as a physical as well as a spiritual process.

The interior of the coffin has been roughly hollowed out by hand, with an internal length of around 1.56 metres, and the workmanship is functional rather than refined. Scholars, including Bradley writing in 1988, date this sarcophagus and others like it to the thirteenth or fourteenth century, a period when the Dominican friars, who gave the abbey its name, were well established in Ireland. St. Dominick's Abbey itself belongs to that tradition of mendicant architecture, where the nave served not only for worship but as a place of burial for patrons and benefactors whose support sustained the community. A sarcophagus of this kind, carved from a single block of limestone and fitted with drainage, represents a significant investment, and its presence here points to the abbey's role as a place of prestige burial during the later medieval period.