It sits well above eye level, easy to miss unless you know to look for it, and its origins are older than the masonry around it. Scholars believe the carving may have been taken from an earlier church on the same site and slotted into the tower during its construction, making it a piece of stonework twice displaced, first from wherever it was originally carved, then from the building it first adorned.

The tower is all that survives of the medieval parish church of Lusk, a structure of considerable ambition for its time. According to architectural historian Harold Leask, the church had two aisles separated by a seven-arched arcade, making it a substantial building by any measure. It was demolished in the nineteenth century, leaving only the west tower standing. That tower is square in plan and rises through five storeys to a belfry stage marked by a cornice. Its corners have projecting turrets with battered, or inward-sloping, walls and stepped battlements, and one of those turrets is formed by an older round tower, one of the distinctive circular stone towers associated with early medieval Irish monasteries. The mingling of round tower and later medieval structure gives the whole composition an unusually layered quality, and the stone head, recorded and described by McMahon in 1991, adds another thread to that layering.

The tower stands in the village of Lusk itself and is not difficult to locate. The carved head occupies the south-east corner high on the exterior, so a clear day and some patience in scanning the stonework will help. The round tower element is visible from a distance and serves as a useful landmark. Because the head sits at height, binoculars are worth bringing if you want a closer look at the carving's detail. There is no dramatic approach required; this is a village site, accessible on foot, and best visited when the light falls at an angle that brings the relief of the stonework into contrast.