The structure is modest to the point of near-invisibility, the stonework now heavily overgrown, and it would be easy to pass without registering that what you are looking at is a holy well, a site once associated with a named saint and, presumably, with the rituals of prayer, petition, and pattern days that attended such places across Ireland for centuries.

The well sits roughly 45 metres south-west of Kilconnell Abbey, a Franciscan friary founded in the fifteenth century in what is now east County Galway. The proximity is unlikely to be coincidental. Holy wells were frequently bound up with monastic sites, the veneration of local saints woven into the wider fabric of religious life in the area. The well bears the name Lanfera, pointing to a specific saintly dedication, though the figure behind the name is now obscure. This pattern, a named saint, a spring, a simple stone covering, is one of the most durable forms of sacred landscape in Ireland, persisting from early medieval Christianity into living memory in many parishes.