The well sits at the bottom of the valley of the east-west Oldcourt Stream, feeding a small stream that runs north-west to join that watercourse roughly forty metres away. It is modest in every physical sense, a simple spring among many in the Irish landscape, yet its name alone sets it apart.

What makes it stranger still is that, despite bearing a saint's name and appearing with the weight of gothic lettering on both the 1839 and 1924 editions of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, there is no evidence that this well was ever used as a site of veneration. Most Irish holy wells carry traces of pilgrimage, pattern days, or at least folk memory of ritual use, often tied to a saint's feast day. The sixth of December, the feast of Saint Nicholas, would be the obvious occasion here, yet nothing of that kind appears to have taken place. The name was cartographically preserved across nearly a century of mapping without any accompanying tradition to explain why it was given in the first place.