It sits at the bottom of an east-facing slope in rolling pastureland, enclosed by a roughly coursed mortared limestone wall that, though much collapsed by the time it was surveyed, still retains a flight of five steps at its southern end. At the south-west, a stone trough receives water through a cut-stone chute, an arrangement that speaks to practical, deliberate construction rather than casual use. A curving arc of large limestone blocks runs in a broad sweep from north-east through east to south-east, about four metres out from the well itself, with a field wall adjoining it to the west, suggesting the site was once more formally enclosed than its present state implies.

The well's name appears in Gothic script on the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps of both 1838 and 1922, which tells us at minimum that it was considered significant enough for formal cartographic recognition across nearly a century of mapping. Holy wells in Ireland were traditionally associated with a patron saint, and the dedication here to Francis, most likely St Francis of Assisi or possibly a local figure of that name, would typically have made such a site a focus for pattern days, small devotional gatherings held on a saint's feast day. What is notable at Francis Well is the absence of votive offerings, those small tokens, rags, coins, or medals, that visitors to active holy wells habitually leave. When Korff and O'Connell documented the site in 1985, none were visible, suggesting the well had already passed out of active devotional use by that point, leaving the stonework as the main record of its former purpose.