The legend holds that when an infant was washed in it, the spring relocated itself, an act of protest, or perhaps self-preservation, that speaks to the particular logic of sacred water in Irish folk belief. Holy wells, springs regarded as possessing curative or spiritual power and often associated with a patron saint, were once tended, visited on pattern days, and credited with healing specific ailments. This one in Gortavalla East, set in poorly drained pasture just east of a kink in a small stream, still exists beneath its current covering of overgrowth, though it has long since ceased to be visited for devotional purposes.

The well appears on the 1927 Ordnance Survey six-inch map simply as Kenny's Well. Folklore scholar Caoimhín Ó Danachair, who photographed the site in 1954 and whose images are now held in the National Folklore Collection at UCD, described it at that time as a clear spring roughly three feet in diameter, with water reputed to cure many ailments. Locally it was known as Saint Kenny's Well, the Kenny in question being identified with Saint Cainneach of Kilkenny, a sixth-century monastic figure associated with numerous sites across Ireland. How exactly a Kilkenny saint came to be venerated in this corner of Limerick is not recorded, but such dedications frequently travelled with communities, clergy, or the slow drift of oral tradition across centuries.

The well today is largely hidden by vegetation, though a rough circle or square of stones around the spring, approximately half a metre across, is still visible to anyone willing to look carefully. There is no formal access or signage, and the surrounding ground is wet and uneven, as the poorly drained pasture setting might suggest. Ó Danachair's 1954 photographs, accessible through the Dúchas digitisation project at duchas.ie, offer the clearest sense of what the site looked like when it was still identifiable as a distinct feature in the landscape.