It is a gable finial, the kind of ornamental crowning piece placed at the apex of a roof gable, and it almost certainly once topped the stone oratory on the island. What makes it remarkable is not its function but its decoration: on one face, carved in low relief, is a full-length human figure with upraised forearms, and on either side of the figure's head are stylised animal heads formed by grooving. The sides of the finial carry continuous lozenge patterns. It is small, measuring just 43 centimetres at its widest, and heavily weathered, but the imagery that survives is of a kind that sits comfortably in the visual world of early medieval Irish ecclesiastical carving.

The finial is of green sandstone and is heart-shaped, with projecting side-wings and a basal tenon, the tenon being the projecting peg designed to slot into a corresponding socket in the masonry below, fixing the piece in place. Two finials are known from Church Island altogether, both associated with the stone oratory on the site. The oratory itself belongs to a tradition of small, mortared or dry-stone churches found on island and coastal sites around Kerry and the wider west of Ireland, often associated with early Christian monastic communities. The decorated finial was not found on land but recovered from the water, which raises quiet questions about how it came to be there, whether through storm damage, coastal erosion, or some more gradual process of the island's long exposure to the Atlantic.