The concrete surround and utilitarian cover give little away, yet this is a site that was once a focus of communal ritual, drawing people together on a fixed date each summer in the old tradition of the pattern, a gathering held at a holy well or sacred site, typically on a saint's feast day, combining prayer with music, dancing, and socialising.

The well appears on the 1838 Ordnance Survey six-inch map as St Kevin's Well, a name that connects it to the celebrated monastic founder of Glendalough, whose presence in Wicklow's landscape of place-names and sacred sites is felt across the county. According to the Ordnance Survey Letters, compiled in the 1830s as part of the wider survey effort, a pattern was held here annually on the 24th of June until 1798. That year is significant: the summer of 1798 was the summer of the United Irishmen's rebellion, and counties Wicklow and Wexford were among the most violently affected. Whether the pattern lapsed because of the upheaval of that year or was suppressed along with other public gatherings is not recorded, but the break proved permanent, at least for adults. What survived, in a reduced and perhaps more cautious form, was a custom of washing children in the well on that same date, the 24th of June, a practice documented by O'Flanagan in 1928. The shift from communal adult ritual to a more private act centred on children is a pattern seen elsewhere in Ireland, where official or social pressure gradually stripped the festive element from such observances while leaving a residue of protective folk custom behind.