It is a sheela-na-gig, one of the carved female figures found on Irish medieval buildings whose explicit posture and exaggerated anatomy have prompted debate among scholars for generations. Their precise meaning remains unresolved, with theories ranging from fertility symbols to apotropaic carvings meant to ward off evil, but their presence on ecclesiastical and secular buildings alike is a consistent feature of the medieval built landscape in Ireland.

The Clenagh figure is described by the scholar Barbara Freitag, writing in 2004, in notably spare terms. The head is earless, outlined by a wide groove, with facial features that are barely discernible. There is no neck. The breasts are only suggested rather than fully formed. The arms run close to the body and curve inward to meet around an oval depression representing the pudenda, a area that shows clear signs of rubbing over time, the kind of wear that suggests repeated, purposeful touching rather than simple erosion. The figure squats, legs thin and spindly, splayed widely at right angles to the body, knees bent, feet pointing outward. It is an economy of form rather than a detailed carving, but the posture is unmistakable. The tower house it occupies, a compact fortified residence of the type built by Gaelic and Anglo-Norman lords across Ireland from the fourteenth century onward, gives the figure its context, fixed into the very fabric of the building at its corner angle.