Yet that is precisely where this sheela-na-gig turned up, rebuilt into the fabric of a wall by persons unknown, its original context long obscured. A sheela-na-gig is a carved stone figure, typically female and explicitly sexual in pose, found on medieval churches and castles across Ireland and Britain; their precise purpose remains debated, with theories ranging from apotropaic warning figures to fertility symbols. This particular example is now registered in the Hunt Museum in Limerick City (Reg. No. HCM 033), having been removed from the circumstances of its discovery for safekeeping.

The carving came to light when workers repairing a culvert on a small stream approximately 100 metres from Black Castle in Caherelly East found it incorporated into a roadside wall. Researchers McMahon and Roberts documented this find, and the scholar Freitag provided a detailed physical description: the figure is skilfully carved in flat relief on local limestone, measuring roughly 0.5 metres high by 0.34 metres wide. It is damaged, with the head missing and the legs lost from the thigh downwards, along with the left hand. What survives, though, is notably unusual among sheela-na-gigs. The trunk and limbs are described as unusually plump, without the emaciation common to many examples, and the breasts are well shaped and proportional. The arms pass behind the legs, with the right hand lifting the lower part of the thigh, and the pudenda are deeply incised, their shape exaggerated and split at the upper end, with a groove cut vertically downwards below. It has been suggested that the figure originally came from the nearby castle when it was demolished in the 19th century, later finding its way into the wall where it was eventually rediscovered.

Anyone wishing to see the carving today should head not to Caherelly but to the Hunt Museum in Limerick City, where it is held in the collection. The museum occupies Customs House on Rutland Street and keeps regular opening hours. The Black Castle site itself remains in the Caherelly East area, though nothing of the sheela-na-gig's original architectural setting survives to frame it. The museum context at least allows a close examination of Freitag's observations, particularly the unusual robustness of the figure, which sets it apart from the more gaunt and skeletal sheelas found elsewhere across the country.