That gap of a few weeks in late 1984 is the strange heart of this small site at the southern end of Ahascragh village in County Galway. Holy wells are a familiar feature of the Irish landscape, typically a natural spring enclosed by some modest stonework and associated with devotional practice stretching back centuries, often long predating Christianity in any formal sense. This one followed that pattern: a spring well enclosed by a low circular dry-stone wall just 1.3 metres across, with a narrow gap on the south-east side serving as an entrance. Set into the outer face of the wall on the north side was a carved stone cross bearing a partially legible inscription, the only clear detail of which was the date 1814.

When surveyors first documented the well on 15th November 1984, the cross was present and noted. They returned the following month specifically to photograph it. In the interim, heavy machinery had moved through the site, apparently as part of activity in the timber yard in which the well sat. A section of the enclosing wall had been knocked down and the rubble pushed against the north face, precisely where the cross had stood. The cross itself could not be found. Whether it was buried under the debris, removed deliberately during the disturbance, or carried off entirely is unknown. O'Flanagan, writing in 1927, had documented the site before any of this, which confirms it was a recognised local monument for at least the better part of the twentieth century before the damage occurred.

The well sits within a working or former timber yard, which shapes what a visitor might expect. The enclosing wall, even before the 1984 damage, was modest in scale, and the site was never a grand piece of religious architecture. What gives it its quiet weight is precisely that inadvertent erasure, a cross dated 1814, its inscription almost worn away even before it disappeared entirely, now unlocated and possibly lost.