These stands, used to dry and stack harvested seaweed before it was processed or sold, were once a practical fixture of coastal life along the west of Ireland, as ordinary to islanders as a turf stack or a field wall. That one has been recorded as a monument on Inis Oírr suggests it has outlasted the routine economy that produced it, and now belongs more to the archaeological record than to any active harvest.

Seaweed gathering on the Aran Islands was never a minor activity. For centuries, the islanders cut and collected various species, particularly kelp and wrack, using it to fertilise the thin soil that covers the limestone karst, and later burning it in kilns to produce kelp ash, which was sold to the chemical industry for iodine and alkali. The stands themselves were simple constructions, typically stone or timber frameworks positioned to catch the wind and allow the seaweed to dry before transport or processing. On an island where almost every patch of workable land was won from bare rock, even the infrastructure of harvesting left its mark on the landscape.