Yet this small depression near the head of a tidal inlet on the Connemara coast has long been treated as something set apart. The cleft in the rock that leads up to it even forms a rough natural staircase, as though the landscape itself made a small concession to the people who came to use it.

The well is known locally as Tobar na Seacht nIníon, meaning the Well of the Seven Daughters, a name that places it within a widespread tradition of Irish holy wells associated with female saints or semi-legendary figures. The identity of the seven daughters in question is not recorded, but the name alone suggests the site was significant enough to carry a story, even if that story has thinned over time. Scattered round pebbles and a few pennies left at the well suggest it has not been entirely forgotten either; votive offerings of this kind, small tokens left at holy wells as part of a pattern of prayer or petition, are common across Ireland and speak to a continuity of informal devotion that can outlast formal religious observance. About twenty metres to the south-east stands a small subrectangular drystone leacht, a low commemorative or devotional cairn-like structure measuring roughly 2.2 metres by 1.3 metres and standing about 0.6 metres high. Leachts of this type are often found near holy wells and penitential sites, used as stations during the rounds or prayers that formed part of traditional well-visiting practice. The site sits roughly half a kilometre west of Carna village, close to the shore of a very small coastal inlet.