The well itself is no longer visible, swallowed by overgrowth, and the holly is now the only outward sign that something significant once occupied the ground beneath it.

Holy wells are among the most quietly persistent features of the Irish landscape, sites where pre-Christian veneration of water sources became absorbed into Christian practice, typically associated with a local saint and visited on a particular feast day for prayers, cures, or the tying of votive offerings to a nearby tree. The holly at Ballythomas belongs to a pattern seen at other such sites, where a distinctive plant, often a thorn or holly, takes on the role of marker and keeper of the place in the absence of any built structure. That the well survives only in local tradition rather than in any physical form that can be inspected or measured says something about how fragile this category of site can be, dependent on memory and oral transmission as much as on stone or masonry.