It is neither. The well it once enclosed has long since run dry, but the architecture around it survives: three walls of dry-stone construction, a corbelled roof built in the beehive style, a niche cut into each interior wall, and an opening that faces south. A corbelled roof is one built without mortar, using overlapping courses of stone that gradually close inward to form a rough dome, a technique with deep roots in early Irish ecclesiastical and vernacular building. The whole thing is modest in scale, quietly precise in its making, and set in a field where you might not expect to find it at all.

The well is associated with St. Lachteen, a figure recorded by O'Donoghue in 1986. Lachteen, also known as Lachtin or Lachtín, was a sixth or seventh-century Irish saint with connections to north Cork, and holy wells dedicated to him are known elsewhere in the region. Wells of this kind were focal points for patterns, the local term for devotional gatherings held on a saint's feast day, combining prayer, circumambulation of the site, and communal assembly. The three internal niches in this structure would have been practical features of that devotional use, offering small recesses where offerings, candles, or devotional objects could be placed. That the well is now dry does not diminish the legibility of the space; the architecture was always at least as important as the water.