This one had been doing the opposite, lying concealed inside a vaulted ground-floor chamber of Glanworth Castle in north Cork, where it remained unnoticed until archaeologists uncovered it during excavations between 1982 and 1984. It was found within the gate tower, specifically in one of two vaulted chambers on the tower's north side, a location that suggests it had at some point been removed from a more visible position and either stored or simply forgotten.

A sheela-na-gig is a carved stone figure, typically female, depicted in a posture of explicit sexual display, and found across medieval Ireland and Britain on ecclesiastical and secular buildings alike. Scholars interpret them as having an apotropaic function, meaning they were intended to ward off evil or misfortune, displayed prominently so that their power could act on anyone approaching. The Glanworth figure is carved onto a single face of a roughly trapezoidal stone just over half a metre tall. The carving is anatomically frank even by the standards of the type: the figure has a large head, hunched shoulders, clearly indicated ribs and breasts, and the legs are widely splayed with both hands grasping the vulva. One arm lies across the torso while the other passes beneath the thigh. What makes the carving particularly unusual, as noted by researcher C. Manning in 1987, is the anus rendered distinctly at the base of the stone, a feature not commonly seen on comparable figures. The original placement was almost certainly on an exterior wall of the castle, where it would have served its intended visible, prophylactic role.

The stone is no longer at Glanworth. Following its excavation it was moved to the National Monuments and Historic Properties Service depot in Mallow, where it is held in storage rather than on public display.