The well sits on a small hill above Cuan na Beirtrí Buí, a bay on the Connemara coast, and is known locally as Tobar Muire, meaning Mary's Well. That name points to a Marian dedication, though the site itself is modest almost to the point of invisibility, a natural round hollow in a sloping rock outcrop rather than anything built or carved.

Holy wells in Ireland are among the oldest continuously used sacred sites in the landscape, often pre-Christian in origin and later absorbed into Catholic devotional practice. This one was documented by Tim Robinson, the cartographer and writer whose meticulous mapping of Connemara in the mid-1980s recorded dozens of such sites that might otherwise have gone unnoted. The two cairns flanking the well, each roughly 0.8 metres high, one topped with a wooden cross, suggest that the immediate area functions as a small devotional space rather than just a water source. Cairns of this kind are commonly associated with patterns, the term used in Ireland for the ritual circuits and prayers performed at holy wells, often on a saint's feast day.