It is a sheela-na-gig, one of the enigmatic stone carvings found across Ireland and Britain, typically depicting a naked female figure in an explicit, stylised pose. Their precise meaning and origin remain contested, though they appear on churches, castles, and boundary walls from the medieval period onward, variously interpreted as fertility symbols, apotropaic figures intended to ward off evil, or survivals of much older traditions absorbed into Christian architecture.

This particular figure sits at the south-west corner of the abbey wall and has not come through the centuries unscathed. The scholar Barbara Freitag, writing in 2004, described it as a mutilated figure on a slab showing traces of severe hacking. What remains is nonetheless legible in its basic form: a large head, arms held in front of the body, splayed legs with feet turned outwards, and the characteristic explicit detail that defines the type. Whether the hacking was the result of deliberate defacement at some point in the abbey's long history, or simply centuries of weathering and rough handling, is not recorded. Holycross Abbey itself is a Cistercian foundation with medieval origins, and the presence of a sheela-na-gig on its precinct wall is a small but telling reminder that medieval religious architecture in Ireland frequently accommodated imagery that later centuries found uncomfortable.

The figure is on the external wall face at approximately head height above the ground for someone standing close to the wall, though at three metres up it requires a deliberate look rather than a casual glance. Its position facing the road means it is accessible without entering the abbey grounds.