The structure is compact but carefully made, measuring roughly 3.55 metres north to south and 3.45 metres east to west, rising to about 2 metres. What lifts it out of the ordinary is the roofline: finely cut limestone slabs arranged in a stepped formation, the whole thing crowned at its apex by a decorative stone urn. It is the kind of considered, expensive detail that signals a family with resources and a concern for how they would be remembered.

The tomb is dedicated to the D'Arcy family, who held connections to Houndswood, Castletown, and Ballykine, their name recorded on a dedication slab set into the southern wall. The D'Arcys were one of the landed families of Connacht, and the choice of finely cut limestone for a stepped pyramidal roof, rather than a simpler horizontal cap, places this firmly within the tradition of elaborate 19th-century family mausolea. A vaulted tomb, in this context, is essentially a small underground chamber built to receive coffins, with a stone superstructure above ground marking the family's place. The 1929 Ordnance Survey six-inch map labels it simply as "Vault", the cartographers apparently finding that one word sufficient. The entrance, which faces north, remains unsealed, though it has been partly blocked at some point by later drystone walling, added informally and without the precision of the original construction.

The enclosure wall that surrounds the tomb, a rough drystone square of about 7 metres on each side, sets it apart from the surrounding graveyard in a way that feels deliberate. It is not the grandeur of a cathedral burial but something more self-contained, a family marking out its own small territory within the wider community of the dead.