That much is certain. Beyond that, the record goes quiet. Holy wells are among the most numerous and yet most poorly documented of Ireland's sacred sites, often surviving as little more than a stone-lined hollow in a field, a spring edged with moss, or a recess in a ditch marked by a rag tied to a nearby branch. Their significance rarely made it into formal histories, passed on instead through the habits of those who visited them, left offerings, and observed the pattern days particular to each one.

Clare is especially rich in such sites. The county's landscape of limestone karst, with its natural fissures and springs, lent itself to the veneration of water sources long before Christianity arrived and folded many of these places into the cult of local saints. A holy well, in the Irish tradition, is typically associated with a named saint and credited with curative or protective properties, often specific to particular ailments. Visiting on the saint's feast day, walking a prescribed circuit called a pattern or patron, and leaving a small votive offering were once common practice across the country, and at many sites these customs have never entirely died out. The well at Ballynagun carries a listed monument designation, which places it within a recognised category of archaeological and cultural heritage, though the details of its patron saint, its pattern day, or the local traditions once attached to it remain unrecorded here.

For a site so briefly described, the well's very existence on the monument record is itself a small piece of evidence, a signal that something survives at Ballynagun worth preserving, even if what that something looks like on the ground is, for now, a matter of going to find out for yourself.