That alone makes it unusual. Most sheela-na-gigs, the enigmatic medieval carvings of female figures that appear on Irish churches and castles, are defined by a single, unambiguous gesture. This one raises both arms, holding what appears to be a circular shape in the left hand and something slim and pointed in the right. The figure itself is small but carefully worked: a grimacing head with deep-set eyes and lines scored across the forehead, no neck to speak of, a slim torso with incised ribs, and widely splayed legs that taper back into the stone of the slab.

The well house to which it is now attached dates from the late sixteenth or seventeenth century and is associated with Kiltinan Castle. But the sheela did not always occupy this spot. According to Barbara Freitag's 2004 study of these carvings, it was placed here in 1940 and may originally have come from Kiltinan Church, which stands roughly 300 metres to the west. That church once had a sheela-na-gig of its own, a separate carving, but that figure was stolen in 1990, leaving the well house carving as the sole surviving example at the site. The result is a figure that has been relocated at least once, possibly displaced from a religious context into an architectural one, and that now sits 3.6 metres above the external ground level, looking down from a wall it was never originally part of.