The holy well at Castlenalact, in West Cork, does none of these things. It lies somewhere beneath tilled farmland, close to a road, with no visible surface trace remaining. The well has effectively vanished into the ground it once drew people to.

Writing in 1931, the scholar Ó Riordain noted that a whitethorn bush, the species traditionally associated with holy wells and fairy ground across Ireland, once grew directly over the site. He also recorded that the rounds are no longer paid here, a phrase that points to the ritual practice of walking a prescribed circuit around a well, often a set number of times and in a specific direction, while reciting prayers. Such rounds were once commonplace at wells throughout Munster and beyond, observed on a patron day tied to a local saint or to a fixed point in the agricultural calendar. By the time Ó Riordain was writing, that practice had already ceased at Castlenalact, and the thorn bush that marked the spot has since disappeared too, leaving the well's precise location a matter of inference rather than observation.