It is no longer visited for religious purposes, no longer tended, and by all accounts no longer accessible at all, which places it in a particular category of Irish sacred site: known, recorded, but effectively lost to the landscape.

Holy wells are among the oldest continuously venerated features in the Irish countryside, their origins often pre-Christian and their reputations carried forward through centuries of local memory rather than written record. This one in Ballinguilly was, according to that local memory, believed to cure fevers. The attribution of specific healing properties to individual wells was once commonplace across Ireland, with different sources of water said to treat ailments from eye complaints to rheumatism to skin conditions. Fever cures were among the most frequently claimed. Whether the well ever attracted formal patterns, the seasonal gatherings of prayer and ritual that were once a fixture of holy well devotion across Munster, is not recorded. What remains is the tradition itself, now detached from any living practice.