It is not a wayside cross in the conventional sense, nor a gravestone in any churchyard. It is a leacht cuimhne, a memorial monument, the kind of freestanding commemorative structure that occasionally appears in the Irish landscape outside the usual contexts of burial grounds and ecclesiastical sites, marking a life, or in this case a family, simply where it was felt they ought to be marked.

The plaque set into the north face of the pier carries an inscription in the direct, unadorned language of the late seventeenth century: GOD BE MERCIFULL UNTO THE SOUL OF EDMUND HOPKINS AND HIS FAMILY. HE DYED THE EIGHT OF JUNE ANNO DONI 1686. That slightly imperfect Latin abbreviation, ANNO DONI rather than ANNO DOMINI, is a small human detail in an otherwise formal statement, a reminder that the stone-cutter was working in a vernacular tradition rather than a classical one. The monument is well-preserved, measuring roughly two and a half metres in length and two metres in height, and it was formally conserved in 2011. Beyond the name, the date, and the spare plea for divine mercy, nothing further is recorded here about Edmund Hopkins or the family commemorated alongside him.