What makes the arrangement quietly unusual is not just the pairing, but the proximity of everything around them: a ruined church to one side, and roughly ten metres to the east, a children's burial ground. Holy wells in Ireland were rarely isolated features; they accumulated associations, and this corner of east Galway carries several layers of them within a very small space.

Holy wells dedicated to Saint Columbkille, the sixth-century monk born in Donegal who founded monasteries across Ireland and eventually on the Scottish island of Iona, are not uncommon across the country, but they tend to appear singly. Here, the two wells are conjoined, each with its own distinct shape and walled surround. The more northerly of the pair is oval in plan, measuring roughly 1.36 metres long, 1.15 metres wide, and 1.2 metres deep. The southerly well is somewhat smaller and subrectangular, approximately one metre by 0.8 metres and slightly shallower. Both are recorded on the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps under the name St. Columbkille's Holy Wells, which suggests they were recognised as a single named place rather than two separate features. The children's burial ground nearby, known in Irish tradition as a cillín, would typically have served as a burial place for unbaptised infants and others excluded from consecrated ground, a common arrangement in rural parishes well into the twentieth century. McCaffrey noted the site in 1952, by which point the wells were already part of a landscape more remembered than actively tended.