Dedicated to St Patrick, it once drew local people for a patron, the traditional Irish gathering held on a saint's feast day, combining religious observance, music, and socialising. The site sits on the north bank of the Awbeg, roughly 250 metres west of a tower house, and was for a period so overgrown that the well itself was obscured; it has since been cleared, and the water is again visible.

The antiquarian Grove White, writing between 1905 and 1925, recorded that the well was "much esteemed by the peasantry for its supposed virtues" and that its water was considered remarkably pure. That combination of practical reputation and sacred association was common at Irish holy wells, where the boundaries between medicinal use and devotional practice were rarely fixed. What makes this particular site more arresting is the nearby discovery of a sheela-na-gig, a carved stone figure depicting a female form in an explicit pose. These carvings, found across Ireland and Britain, are not fully understood; theories range from fertility symbolism to apotropaic warnings, and their presence near religious sites is not unusual, though it remains unexplained. The connection between the carving and the well is not documented, but the proximity of the two is the kind of juxtaposition that suggests the landscape here accumulated significance over a very long period.