The finial, a decorative crowning piece of the kind used at the apex of a gable in early medieval church architecture, has been repurposed as an ornament on the east gable of the well-house. It is an object out of place in more than one sense, raised above a different building, in a different century, perhaps even transplanted from a different parish entirely.

The finial is thought to date from a 10th or 11th-century church, and the most obvious candidate is the Clontubbrid church itself, traces of which have entirely disappeared at ground level. But Tomás Ó Carragáin, writing in 2010, raises the possibility that it may have originated instead at the early medieval church in Freshford, roughly three kilometres to the south. That alternative provenance cannot be confirmed, and it may never be, but it gives the object an intriguing ambiguity. It is associated by record with Clontubbrid, yet it may be a traveller from elsewhere, re-set by someone who valued the carved stone without necessarily knowing or caring about its original home.