This is a sheela-na-gig, a carved female figure found on churches, castles, and other structures across Ireland and Britain, typically depicted in an overtly sexual pose whose precise meaning has been debated for generations. What makes the Cartronkeel example quietly arresting is the combination of its survival and its setting: a figure of likely medieval origin pressed into a workaday farm wall, still commanding attention from whoever passes through beneath it.

The carving sits above a pointed doorway that was rebuilt into an eighteenth or nineteenth century outbuilding in the farmyard immediately east of Moate Castle. Both the doorway and the figure are thought to have originally come from the castle itself. The carving was described in detail by Barbara Freitag in her 2004 study of sheela-na-gigs: the figure is cut into an oval impression on a roughly rectangular slab, with all features asymmetrical. The head is disproportionately large, with wavy lines across the forehead, one eye left blank and the other showing an eyeball, puffy cheeks, and an open mouth with visible teeth. The body is spare but deliberate, with tiny breasts, a protruding belly, a belt passing obliquely around the abdomen, and arms reaching downward so that both hands grasp an oval vulva. Only the left thigh survives below the waist. The asymmetry and the mixed state of the eyes give the figure an unsettling, watchful quality that photographs rarely quite capture.