The roughly circular depression measures little more than forty centimetres across and thirty-five deep, filled with water and covered almost entirely by a single stone carved with a cross. That stone is the detail that elevates this from a boggy dip in a hillside to something deliberately marked and tended across centuries. The well is known as St Michael's Well, and given that the feast of the archangel Michael, Michaelmas, falls on 29th September, the associated date of 25th September suggests a local variation of that tradition rooted in the agricultural calendar of this part of County Cork.

The practice of making rounds at a holy well involves walking a prescribed circuit, usually a set number of times and in a specific direction, often while reciting prayers, sometimes barefoot. It is a form of devotion with pre-Christian roots that was absorbed into Irish Catholic practice and survived in rural areas long after it had faded elsewhere. At St Michael's Well, rounds were still being made up to recent times on 25th September, which places this site among those that maintained an unbroken, if quiet, ritual continuity well into living memory. Eight metres to the north lies a penitential station, a designated stopping point within that devotional circuit where particular prayers would have been said. Four small wooden crosses, recently made, lie on the ground a metre to the east of the well, a sign that someone, or several people, have continued to mark the place with intention.