This holy well near Kilmeen Church in County Cork does none of that. According to the record, it lies to the west of the church, and there is no visible surface trace of it whatsoever. It exists, in a sense, only as a coordinate and a category, a place that was once significant enough to be named and noted, but which has since been entirely swallowed by the landscape.

Holy wells are among the oldest continuously venerated sites in Ireland, often pre-dating Christianity and absorbed rather than abolished by the early Church. They were typically associated with a local saint, credited with curative or protective powers, and visited on specific pattern days, the annual gatherings, sometimes called "patterns" from the Irish "pátrún" meaning patron, at which prayers, rituals, and occasionally a good deal of socialising would take place. The well near Kilmeen sits within the townland of Glebe, a name that in Irish land terminology generally refers to church land set aside for the maintenance of a clergyman, which hints at a long ecclesiastical geography in this corner of west Cork. The church itself remains as a reference point, but whatever physical form the well once took, whether a simple stone-lined basin, a natural spring, or a more developed enclosure, it has left nothing visible above ground.