It stands to the west of a holy well dedicated to St Coleman, and tradition holds that the cross marks the exact spot where the saint was born. That kind of localised claim, tying a sacred landmark to a precise moment of origin, is relatively uncommon even in a country well supplied with early Christian associations, and it gives this particular site a specificity that sets it apart from the more general pattern of pattern-day wells and wayside crosses.

The cross itself, according to an inscription on its base, was erected in 1901, placing it firmly in the late Victorian wave of Catholic devotional revival that saw the restoration and formalisation of many older sacred sites across Ireland. When the site was examined in November 1982, the cross had been smashed. The base stone survived, its inscription still legible. By July 1993, when the site was visited again, a Celtic cross, the form characterised by a ring connecting the arms of the cross, had been put up on that same original base. The well it accompanies, dedicated to St Coleman, belongs to a long tradition of holy wells in the west of Ireland, where natural water sources became focal points for veneration, often linked to a local or regional saint whose cult predated the Norman period by centuries.