It was submerged in the mid-twentieth century when the Lee Valley Hydro-electric Scheme flooded the valley, erasing whole townlands, field systems, and the quiet sacred geography that communities had maintained for centuries. The well at Inishleena was one such casualty, recorded just in time before the waters rose.

Before it was lost, the well stood to the north of Inishleena abbey, at the foot of a rock cliff. Holy wells in Ireland were typically springs or seeps of water regarded as possessing curative or spiritually significant properties, often linked to a nearby ecclesiastical site and maintained through generations of local custom. This one was no exception, being traditionally associated with the abbey beside it. What made it distinctive was its enclosure: a small canopy structure of mortared sandstone-rubble and red brick, with interior dimensions of roughly three and a half feet high and two and a half by four and a half feet across. It was a modest but deliberate piece of construction, sheltering the water source with materials that mixed older rubble masonry with more modern brick. Fahy documented it in 1957, not long before the flooding rendered such records the only form the site could take.

The Lee Valley Hydro-electric Scheme, developed in the 1950s, created Lough Inniscarra and Lough Carrigadrohid, drowning a stretch of valley that contained farms, roads, and archaeological remains of considerable age. Inishleena abbey itself survived above the waterline, but the well to its north did not. What exists now is a description, a set of measurements, and the knowledge that a small brick-and-rubble canopy once sheltered sacred water at the foot of a cliff, before the valley filled and closed over it.