Rather than a simple stone-lined pool or a modest wall enclosure, this one has been built up into something resembling a small architectural cabinet. Set into a natural slope and lined with coursed slabs, it rises above the water in two further tiers of upright supports and flat capstones, producing a stacked, shelf-like effect. At the very top sits a statue niche, empty or otherwise, completing the composition. The whole structure has the appearance of something carefully considered rather than merely functional.

Holy wells in Ireland were traditionally sites of pattern days and devotional rounds, often associated with a local saint and visited for healing or blessing. Many retain that living function; this one, the record notes, is no longer in holy use. What remains is the structure itself, sitting in the hillside at Gouladoo, its tiered stonework intact. A short distance to the north-north-east, a promontory fort occupies the landscape, one of those defensive enclosures in which a headland or spur of high ground was cut off by a bank and ditch across its neck. The proximity of the two features, well and fort, is not explained by anything surviving in the record, but it is the kind of pairing that recurs often enough in the Irish countryside to feel less than accidental.