It is not a constructed well in any conventional sense, but a small natural round pothole formed in a dyke of dark porphyry, a type of igneous rock characterised by its deep colour and coarse crystals set in a finer matrix. What makes this spot particularly arresting is the name given to that rocky dyke: Bóthar na Naomh, meaning the Road of the Saints.

Local tradition holds that this was the path a saint walked when travelling from Daighinis to the neighbouring island of Oileán Mhic Dar. The pothole at the outer end of the dyke is understood to mark, or to have been sanctified by, that passage. Holy wells in Ireland typically accumulate layers of veneration over centuries, sometimes pre-Christian in origin and later absorbed into a Christian framework, with the water itself regarded as having curative or protective properties. Here, the geology and the legend have become inseparable: the dark volcanic rock becomes a road, and a depression worn by natural processes becomes a site of sacred memory. The detail about the saint's route was recorded by Tim Robinson, whose meticulous mapping and writing on the landscapes of Connemara and the Aran Islands documented place-names and local knowledge that might otherwise have gone unrecorded.