This one was deliberate. A sheela-na-gig, the term used for the carved stone figures of women displaying exaggerated genitalia that appear on medieval churches and castles across Ireland and Britain, once formed part of the fabric of Ballynamona Castle in north County Cork. It was removed from the castle wall, moved to a nearby gatepost, and then smashed, apparently by a mason who, as the contemporary record bluntly put it, "did not admire the taste of the sculptor." The fragments have never been traced.

The figure was documented by Byrne in 1902, by which point the damage was already done. Byrne recorded that the sheela had been taken from the castle wall and repositioned in a gatepost, already somewhat the worse for the mason's intervention. When he returned to the gatepost to examine it again, it was gone. He eventually found the pieces at some distance away, broken beyond any possibility of repair. The location of those fragments remains unknown. Sheelas are often interpreted as apotropaic figures, meaning they were believed to ward off evil, and were incorporated into the stonework of medieval buildings with apparent intent. Whatever its original purpose at Ballynamona, the carving did not survive long once it attracted the wrong kind of attention.