Holy wells, known in Irish as tobar, were focal points of local devotion across Ireland, often associated with a patron saint and visited on particular feast days for prayers, cures, or the tying of votive rags to nearby branches. This one carries the name Toberatoo, though the precise meaning or saint behind that name is no longer obvious from what survives.

What gives the site a quiet persistence is its appearance on the first edition Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1839, where it is marked in Gothic script, the style the OS conventionally used to indicate antiquities and features of historical or ecclesiastical significance. The same name reappears on the revised edition produced between 1899 and 1902, suggesting that whatever local memory attached to the well had not entirely dissolved across those six decades. The setting, marshy ground within rough pasture, is characteristic of many Irish holy wells, which were frequently associated with water sources that seemed to emerge from the earth without obvious explanation, lending them an air of the otherworldly long before any Christian significance was layered on top.