The carving in question was a sheela-na-gig, one of those enigmatic medieval stone figures depicting an exaggerated female form, found across Ireland and Britain, most often on churches and castles, though their precise purpose remains debated. This particular one had been set into a gate post at Drinan House, which is an odd enough place for such a carving, and as it turned out, not even its original home.

The figure came to official attention in 1945, when Father John Dunlea, the local parish priest, noticed it on the gate pillar and recognised it for what it was. Writing that year, he described it as being "in danger of destruction by farm-carts passing by" and said he brought it to the attention of H. G. Leask, then Inspector of National Monuments. Leask contacted the National Museum in Dublin, and with the co-operation of a Mr. Wilson of Drinan House, the stone was carefully removed and transferred to the Museum's collection, where it remains. The discovery was documented by Dunlea in 1945 and later referenced by Cherry in 1992 and by Freitag in 2004, though none of these sources were able to establish where the carving had originally stood before it ended up as a gate post. That question has never been resolved, and the record for the Drinan site has since been reclassified as redundant precisely because the carving's true provenance is unknown.

The sheela-na-gig itself is now held at the National Museum of Ireland, so Drinan House is not the place to go looking for it. The Museum's archaeology collections in Dublin are the practical destination for anyone wanting to see the carving in person. Drinan House near Swords does still exist as a site of record, but there is nothing at the gate post to see now, and the carving's original architectural context, whether church wall, castle tower, or something else entirely, remains a matter of open speculation.