The well was known as Tobar an Bhric, meaning the well of the trout, a name that preserves an old tradition of a single fish said to inhabit the water. That kind of sacred or prophetic trout appears in Irish holy well lore with some regularity, the creature serving as a kind of guardian or omen rather than simply a fish. Here, the name has outlasted the well itself.

Before the reservoir was created and the surrounding land flooded, the well functioned as a place of popular devotion. The Ordnance Survey Name Books, compiled by surveyors in the nineteenth century as they mapped and recorded local placenames and customs, noted that invalids came to drink from the well and that those who visited left rags on the bushes nearby. This practice, sometimes called clootie custom or rag-tying, was common at holy wells across Ireland, with strips of cloth left as votive offerings, often in connection with prayers for healing. The sick or suffering would drink, pray, and leave something of themselves behind on the branches. The Blessington Reservoir was formed in the mid-twentieth century to supply water to Dublin, and the flooding of the valley erased a number of older features from the landscape, this well among them.

There is nothing to see at the site today. The well and its surrounding bushes lie under the reservoir, the water that now covers them serving an entirely different purpose from the one local people once sought there.