Corbelling is an ancient building technique in which stones are laid in overlapping courses until they meet at the top, forming a self-supporting roof without mortar. The entrance, facing east, is just over a metre high and splayed outward, with a niche cut into the wall on each side to hold cups. Steps lead down to the water. Crosses have been scratched into the surrounding stones by pilgrims over many years, and the well is still in active religious use.

The structure carries a good deal of layered history in a small space. A slab above the entrance bears the inscription "St Abigail expelling the plague 1872", and when the antiquarian Grove White visited in May 1902 he recorded a carved figure, roughly six inches by three, positioned above it. An earlier account by Berry in 1905 had described a painted panel inside, showing St Abigail kneeling before an altar in the act of driving out plague; the panel was later moved outside, the paint weathered away, and only the relief carving survived. Grove White also noted a second inscribed stone on the southern side of the structure, dated 1874, requesting prayers for the souls in purgatory and for those who erected the stone. He was told that the masonry repairs and the inscriptions were the work of a local man, John O'Callaghan, who lived nearby and was known as "Johnny the Prayers". O'Callaghan was buried close to the well he had tended. When Grove White visited, strips of linen were tied to branches nearby, a custom common at holy wells across Ireland where cloth offerings, sometimes called clooties, were left by those seeking intercession or cure.

The well's principal feast day falls on the 11th of February, when pilgrims traditionally visit and pay their rounds, a practice of walking a prescribed circuit while reciting prayers. A footpath once connected this site to the nearby place known as Shansepeal, suggesting it formed part of a wider pattern of local devotional movement across the landscape.