That quiet demotion is part of what makes Tobar Máirtín, St Martin's Well, in Tarmon worth pausing over. The well itself is modest: a small, clear pool enclosed within a circular structure of drystone walling and flagstones, with a cluster of thorn trees growing nearby. The thorn tree is a familiar companion to holy wells across Ireland, traditionally associated with offerings and the marking of sacred ground, and their presence here suggests the site once carried that kind of devotional weight, even if little of it is now visible.

The well appears on Ordnance Survey maps from both 1841 to 1842 and 1914, recorded under the name Tobermartin, which is an anglicisation of Tobar Máirtín. St Martin, in this context, is almost certainly Martin of Tours, a fourth-century bishop whose cult spread widely through early Christian Ireland and whose name attached itself to numerous wells and feast-day observances. The Ordnance Survey Name Books, compiled in the nineteenth century as part of the mapping project, note that an individual was restored to health by being immersed in the well, a formula typical of the curative traditions surrounding such sites, where full immersion or the drinking of water was believed to address specific ailments. Rounds, the ritual circling of a well a set number of times in prayer, were also a common practice at sites like this, though no such detail is recorded here specifically.

What the well looks like today is largely what it has always looked like: a small, carefully built circular structure, unassuming enough to be easily overlooked. The drystone construction, using stones laid without mortar, is a technique common across Kerry and would require little in the way of specialist labour to maintain. Whether the people now drawing from it for domestic use are aware of what earlier visitors came here hoping to find is another matter entirely.