Tobairín an Átha Leacaigh, in the townland of An Máimín in County Galway, has none of that. It is simply a small, naturally formed triangular hollow worn into a broad flagstone beside a stream, close to an obvious fording point on the water. The well is the stone itself, or rather what collects in it.

The site sits on the southern bank of a stream that doubles as a townland boundary, roughly 150 metres upstream from Loch an Mhuilinn. Its local name, Tobairín an Átha Leacaigh, translates loosely as the little well of the flagstone ford, which is a remarkably precise description of what is actually there. The name was recorded by the cartographer and writer Tim Robinson, whose painstaking work documenting the placenames of Connemara and the Aran Islands preserved countless pieces of local knowledge that would otherwise have slipped out of use entirely. The well's location at a crossing-point on a boundary stream is not incidental. Holy wells in Ireland frequently occupy liminal ground, places where one territory meets another, where water crosses land, or where a path narrows to a single passable point. The combination of all three here gives Tobairín an Átha Leacaigh a quietly layered significance that its modest appearance does little to advertise.