It appears on the third edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map from 1934, it was written about by the local historian and priest Fahey as early as 1904, and it is listed in the standard guide to the area by Killanin and Duignan. It exists, in other words, on paper. On the ground, it is another matter entirely.

The well sits, or sat, roughly 450 metres south of the Augustinian abbey that once dominated this part of the north Galway shoreline. Augustinian houses, established in Ireland from the thirteenth century onwards, frequently drew on and sanctified pre-existing sacred sites in their vicinity, and a holy well in such close proximity to a monastic foundation would not be unusual. What is unusual is the current state of the site. An old estate well, a more recent structure likely associated with one of the larger landholding families of the post-medieval period, has collapsed somewhere nearby. Its rubble, it is thought, may have buried or obscured the original holy well entirely, leaving only the cartographic and textual record as evidence that anything was ever there.