There is no sign, no basin, no plaque. If you did not already know to look for it, you would walk past without a second glance. Locally, it goes by the name "Our Lady's Spout", or sometimes "The Eye Spout", and the belief attached to it is precise and longstanding: the water cures sore eyes.

The spout sits in the retaining wall on the south side of Harbour Road, just outside the ruins of St Mary's Abbey. The water is understood to originate from a holy well, dedicated to Our Lady, somewhere within the abbey grounds, travelling beneath the medieval fabric of the ruin before emerging through the pipe. Holy wells are a widespread feature of the Irish landscape, typically springs or sources associated with a saint or sacred figure and credited with healing properties, often for specific ailments. The connection between well water and eye complaints is a recurring thread in Irish folk tradition, though the Howth example is unusually well documented. Caoimhín Ó Danachair recorded it in 1958, listing both names by which it was known locally. Earlier still, in 1934, pupils at Howth School set down their own account as part of the Irish Folklore Commission's Schools' Collection, describing "a small stream of water which runs through an iron spout" and noting that "the people still use it for that purpose." That phrase, written nearly a century ago, implies a practice already old by then.

The spout is not marked on any map, which makes finding it a matter of paying attention rather than navigation. Walking along Harbour Road with the abbey ruins to your right, look for the retaining wall of the graveyard; the pipe projects from the stonework at around four to five feet from the ground. The trickle is steady but slight, easy to miss if you are not looking at eye level. There is no particular season that makes a visit more rewarding, though the wall and the ruined abbey above it read differently depending on the light. What is worth pausing over is the unremarkable appearance of the thing itself, a modest piece of Victorian ironwork carrying water from a source that people once, and apparently still, considered sacred.