That quiet contradiction sits at the centre of what makes it worth attention. Holy trees in Ireland were typically hawthorns or ash, growing beside holy wells and receiving the same votive attentions as the water itself: scraps of cloth, small offerings, prayers tied to branches. At Noughaval, the tradition seems to have quietly expired, leaving the tree still carrying its designation without any of the ritual that usually sustains one.

The antiquarian Thomas Johnson Westropp documented the site at least twice in the 1890s and early 1900s, describing the tree as "an uncouth and ancient ash" standing in association with the holy well known as Tobermogua, roughly one metre to the tree's east. Westropp was a meticulous recorder of Clare's ecclesiastical and folklore landscape, and his noting of the tree's sacred status suggests it was at least nominally recognised at the turn of the twentieth century. When the site was inspected in May 1997, however, no rags or votive offerings were present, and local people did not recall ever seeing any there. Whether the custom had died out before living memory or had simply never taken the form seen elsewhere is unclear. About eighty metres to the south-west, a medieval church and graveyard complete a small cluster of sacred sites that suggests Noughaval was once a place of some local religious significance, the kind of layered landscape where pre-Christian associations around water and trees persisted quietly alongside formal Christian structures.