At some point, likely in the nineteenth century, it was pressed into service as a headstone for a modern grave, a fate noted by Atkinson in 1887, and it was moved at least once more before settling in its current position. The stone socket it stands in was partially uncovered during Office of Public Works work at the site in 1982, then reburied again. What looks, at first glance, like a quietly decorative piece of early medieval stonework is in fact a sundial, the gnomon hole still visible at the centre of the carved face, the radiating lines around it once used to read the hours from a shadow cast by a projecting pin.

The pillar is 1.23 metres tall, with a roughly semi-circular head and a rectangular shaft, both dressed to a smooth finish. The carving across its four faces is dense and carefully considered. The south-east face carries the primary dial design: four sectors defined by paired or triple radiating lines spreading from two inscribed circles around the gnomon hole, terminating in five outline semi-circles, the whole framed by a groove that follows the curve of the stone's head. The shaft below adds further ornament, with two vertical lines ending in fret motifs at each end. The north-west face is more elaborate and less symmetrical, built around a cross formed from intersecting arcs, its angles and arms filled with outline triangles, concentric ovals, a spiralled oval, and rounded triangles. The south-west side, divided into two panels, closes with a pair of opposed fret designs at the junction of head and shaft. The site itself sits within an Early Christian and medieval ecclesiastical complex at the foot of the western slopes of Reenconnell hill, sheltered by the hill's spurs to the north and south, with Smerwick Harbour visible to the west. Kilmalkedar was an important early church site on the Corca Dhuibhne peninsula, and the sundial's survival, even in its much-travelled state, gives some sense of how finely crafted the material culture of such places could be.