Roughly shaped into a shallow Y-form and measuring 65 centimetres at its longest, it is the kind of object easy to overlook: undecorated, unpolished, and apparently incomplete. Yet its form identifies it as a finial, the type of carved or shaped stone element placed at the apex or terminal points of a roof or gable on early ecclesiastical buildings. The fact that this one is undecorated, and described as only the second such finial found on the island, hints at a building tradition that was modest in its ornament but deliberate in its craft.

The fragment was recovered from the south-eastern quadrant of Church Island, which sits off the Iveragh Peninsula in south Kerry, a coastline with a dense concentration of early medieval Christian remains. Finials of this kind are associated with early Irish church architecture, where stone roofing and decorative terminations at roof ridges were features of smaller monastic or devotional buildings. That this example is of local slate, only roughly dressed rather than finely finished, suggests a practical rather than ceremonial function, or possibly that it was never completed. Its dimensions, .65 metres by .34 metres, make it a substantial piece despite its unfinished appearance. The find is recorded in the archaeological survey of the Iveragh Peninsula compiled by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan and published by Cork University Press in 1996.