The Ordnance Survey mapped it as St. Michael's Well in 1837, locals have called it St. Macullin's Well, and the schoolchildren of Oldtown, who recorded its traditions sometime in the mid-twentieth century, knew it firmly as St. Patrick's Well. The name on the map and the name in living memory do not agree, and neither entirely matches the saint to whom the site appears to have once been dedicated. That slippage of identity is part of what makes this small well, tucked into the southern quadrant of Grallagh graveyard, quietly absorbing.

D'Alton, writing in 1838, found it already enclosed, describing an arched well dedicated to Saint Maccallin and overhung by an elder tree. By 1887 the structure appears to have been substantially repaired or rebuilt; Walsh, writing the following year, noted a carefully restored stone-roofed building covering it. The current structure is a steeply pitched stone building of twentieth-century date, aligned north to south, with a pointed cut-stone doorway in the centre of its south wall and a vaulted roof within. The walls are plastered internally and fitted with two niches holding votive offerings. To reach the water, a visitor descends three steps, the first of which has a shamrock carved into its surface. Another holy well, St. John's Well, lies just 64 metres to the south, which gives the whole corner of this graveyard an unusual density of sacred water. In former times a pattern day, the traditional Irish annual gathering at a holy well or saint's site, was held here on the first Sunday in August. The schoolchildren's account, preserved in the Dúchas Schools' Collection, records traditions of cures for whooping cough, sore eyes, and rheumatism, the last requiring a visit on the night of the patron and three Hail Marys addressed to St. Patrick.

Grallagh graveyard is in north Co. Dublin, and the well sits roughly 20 metres south of Grallagh church within the graveyard grounds. The stone building is compact but substantial, and the carved shamrock on the first step is easy to miss if you descend without looking down. The votive niches in the east and west walls are worth pausing at. There is no particular season required to visit, though the first Sunday in August carries its own residual significance for anyone curious about the pattern day tradition that once gathered people here.