Wells of this kind in Ireland carry considerable weight, historically speaking. Many are holy wells, sites of pre-Christian or early Christian veneration that were folded into local religious practice over centuries, accumulating patron days, votive offerings, and cures attributed to their waters. Others are simply ancient water sources whose age or construction marks them out from the ordinary. That Cloghastookeen has one on record is enough to suggest the place has layers worth knowing about.

The townland name itself offers a small clue. Cloghastookeen derives from the Irish, with "cloch" meaning stone, and the diminutive suffix suggesting something small or particular about that stone. Whether the well and the named stone are connected is not certain, but it is the kind of coincidence that tends not to be coincidental in Irish placenames, where landscape features, local landmarks, and ancient usage are often compressed together into a single word that outlasts everything else. Wells in Galway have long been associated with patterns, the local term for an annual gathering at a sacred site, usually on a saint's feast day, involving prayer, circumambulation of the well, and sometimes communal celebration.