What gives this one its peculiar character is the combination of layers compressed into a single modest spot: a burial mound that predates written record, a well that has been drawing water and, presumably, visitors for centuries, and a name, Shavers Well, that raises more questions than it answers.

The well itself is compact to the point of austerity, a rectangular drystone construction measuring just 0.35 metres by 0.35 metres and 0.75 metres deep, covered by a limestone slab and open to the north where it joins a stream. Drystone construction means no mortar was used, the stones simply fitted and weighted against one another, a technique that can survive considerable age when done well. The well is set into the northern face of a cairn, the kind of stone mound typically associated with prehistoric burial or ritual, this one measuring eight metres in diameter and rising to 1.25 metres. The Ordnance Survey mapped it as a well in both its 1835 and 1907 editions of the six-inch series, though only the later edition names it, marking it in the distinctive italic lettering the surveyors reserved for antiquities and features considered notable. A modern shrine now stands adjacent, suggesting that whatever devotional pull the site once carried has not entirely faded.

The name Shavers Well resists easy explanation. It does not appear to correspond to any obvious saint's name, and the italic styling on the 1907 map implies the surveyors understood it as something older or more significant than a purely functional water source. Whether the name is a corruption, a local nickname, or something else entirely, the cartographic record does not say.