It is hollow inside, roughly the size of a large chest, and has spent many centuries being contested, appropriated, and mishandled to the point that it has split into two pieces. That it survives at all, in any form, is something of a minor wonder.

The antiquarian W. F. Wakeman, writing in 1875, recorded the object in considerable detail, noting its dimensions of 1.85 metres long, 0.67 metres wide, and 0.94 metres high, and observing that its shape appeared to imitate a wooden house or church. This is significant: early Irish stone carvers sometimes rendered in stone the forms of the timber buildings they knew, and if this piece genuinely belongs to the ninth or tenth century, as is believed, it would place it among the earliest surviving examples of stone church architecture in Ireland, albeit in miniature. It is thought to be the oldest remaining feature of St Tigearnach's monastery at this site. St Tigearnach was a sixth-century bishop associated with Clones, also in County Monaghan, and monasteries founded under his patronage carried considerable prestige in the early Irish church. In later centuries the shrine was drawn into post-medieval burial rituals, and at some point competing groups added inscriptions in an effort to claim it for their own purposes; the rough handling that accompanied these attempts is what caused the split visible today. The carved figures of ecclesiastics on the gables and walls, which would once have identified the object's religious function clearly, are now badly eroded.

The shrine is currently displayed inside the perimeter of the graveyard at Crossmoyle, where it can be seen in something approaching a sheltered setting. Given how much it has already lost to weathering and human interference, the erosion on the carvings is worth studying closely; what remains of the figured decoration, even in its damaged state, gives some sense of the craft invested in an object that was clearly considered important enough to fight over across several centuries.