The slab it belongs to is a fragment of an effigial graveslab, the kind of medieval memorial on which the deceased was depicted lying in full or partial figure, and this particular piece preserves only the lower half of the body. The bare feet splay outward and downward, the legs visible beneath the folds of a garment, and the lower portion of what appears to be a surcoat, a sleeveless over-garment commonly worn by men of some social standing in the medieval period, flares out from the waist to just above the knees. The carving is executed in very flat relief, and heavy surface exfoliation has worn away much of the finer detail, leaving the anatomy obscure except, curiously, for that wrongly-sided foot.

The slab was found in the 1960s, according to Peter Harbison writing in 1971, built into the walls of Dysert O'Dea church in Mollaneen, the ruins of a Romanesque church long associated with the O'Dea family and the hermit saint Maeldubh. John Hunt, writing in 1974, recorded that it was subsequently removed and hung on the exterior southern wall of the same church, to the east of its decorated Romanesque doorway, where at least it could be seen. The wedge shape of the slab and its border of rope-moulding set between two rolled mouldings place it within a recognisable tradition of medieval Irish funerary carving, though the identity of the figure, described cautiously by Hunt as "presumably male", is not known. The slab has since been moved again and is now held in the Office of Public Works depot in Athenry, County Galway, which is where it currently resides rather than in Clare at all.