The well sits just six metres outside the western boundary wall of Kilfinny graveyard in the townland of Ballynakill, Co. Limerick, occupying a raised, roughly circular earthen platform about six metres across and nearly half a metre high, its edge defined by the remains of a collapsed stone kerb. A more recent stone enclosure with a small gate on the south side now frames the sunken, stone-lined well chamber, which measures just under a metre and a half east to west and drops around eighty centimetres. It is a modest arrangement in undulating pasture at the edge of a marshy area, easily overlooked by anyone not already looking for it.

The well is dedicated to St Ciarán, and the 9th of September, his feast day, has long been the occasion for what is known in Irish tradition as "rounds", a devotional practice in which pilgrims walk a prescribed circuit around a sacred site a set number of times while praying. Here the ritual was recorded in the Schools' Collection gathered from Kilfinny National School: nine circuits of the church, nine circuits of the well, the Rosary said three times in the churchyard and once around the well. The water was considered particularly effective for curing sore eyes, with pilgrims bathing their eyes and drinking from the well. Small pictures and religious medals were left behind at the site as offerings. The folklorist Caoimhín Ó Danachair, writing in 1955, noted that rounds were still being made by a few people at that time, and he photographed the site in 1954; those images are held by the National Folklore Collection at UCD and can be viewed through the Dúchas digital archive.

The well lies on the northern edge of a marshy stretch of ground, so the ground underfoot can be soft, particularly outside the summer months. The site is just west of Kilfinny graveyard, which itself provides the clearest landmark. The whitethorn bush noted in the folklore record as growing beside the well is the kind of detail worth looking for; such bushes are commonly associated with holy wells across Ireland and are traditionally left undisturbed. The well chamber itself was dry when last formally recorded, so water may not always be present. The feast day of the 9th of September remains the moment when this otherwise quiet spot carries the most weight of its own history.