It sits beside a spring well known as Tobermurry, or Tobar Muire, meaning the Well of Mary, now arranged in a modern landscaped setting and watched over by an encased statue of the Blessed Virgin. The cross-inscribed stone and the well are distinct objects, yet they belong to the same layered place, one that has absorbed centuries of devotional use into a rather modest modern presentation.

The well itself was recorded as a destination for the sick, visited on Saturdays by people hoping for relief from illness. This kind of ritual circuit around a holy well, known in Ireland as a pattern (from the word patron, referring to the saint or sacred figure associated with the site), persisted long after formal church approval of such practices became uncertain. At Tobermurry the pattern is still observed on 15th August, the feast of Our Lady, connecting the site explicitly to Marian devotion. The same date coincides with a major fair in Kenmare, suggesting that the religious and the commercial have long shared the calendar here, each drawing people into the town and out to the well on the same day.