But what makes this particular site in Monanimy, north County Cork, quietly strange is the legend attached to it: the well was not always here. According to local tradition, it began its life roughly a mile to the north-west, in the walled garden of a house called The Glen, where it was dedicated to St Cranith.

The story of how it came to move involves an insult. A travelling man, calling at The Glen, was apparently treated badly by the woman of the house, and the well, in the manner of sacred places that retain a kind of agency in Irish folk memory, relocated itself in response, taking its dedication with it or, as the notes suggest, perhaps exchanging it for a new one along the way. St Cranith, along with St Branait, was recorded by Byrne in 1902 as a sibling of St Nicholas, a cluster of local saints whose cults left scattered dedications across the area. Rounds were paid at this well, meaning that worshippers walked a prescribed circuit around the site, a ritual practice common to holy wells across Ireland, often performed barefoot and accompanied by prayer. A stone at the site is marked with the sign of the cross, a physical trace of that devotional use.

The well today is very overgrown, sitting low at the foot of its rock outcrop with the water still moving through as it apparently always has. It is the kind of place that rewards a careful look rather than a passing glance, not least because the stream, the marked stone, and the outcrop together give a sense of why such a spot might have attracted veneration in the first place, whatever the original dedication was or wherever it truly began.