This is a holy well, but one that has been given an unusual degree of permanent, formal architecture. To reach the water, you descend steps through a segmental arched opening, the arch cut into the circular wall itself, and find yourself at a small elliptical well head, plastered and sunk about a metre into the ground. On a ledge along the northern interior, small shrines have been placed. The whole enclosure, roughly twelve metres by sixteen, is bounded by hedging on three sides and a low wall with railings along the road frontage to the south.

The well sits across the road from where the old parish church of Rathcahill once stood, a proximity that was almost certainly deliberate, reflecting the long habit of locating Christian devotional sites alongside earlier sacred water sources. John O'Donovan, the scholar and antiquarian who surveyed this part of Limerick for the Ordnance Survey in 1840, recorded the circular stone enclosure and noted that a pattern was still being held here on the 15th of August, though he observed it was only partly continued by that point. A pattern, in Irish tradition, was a local pilgrimage ritual held on a saint's feast day, typically involving circuits of the well, prayers, and sometimes a fair or gathering. Writing over a century later, the folklorist Caoimhín Ó Danachair noted in 1955 that the well had a reputation for curing sore eyes, and that it retained a rag tree. A rag tree is a tree near a holy well where visitors tie strips of cloth, often in connection with a request for healing; as the rag decays, the ailment is believed to pass.

The well is on the northern side of a public road in Rathcahill East. The enclosure is visible from the road and the low wall with railings along the southern boundary gives a clear sense of the site's extent. The arched entrance to the well chamber is set into that southern wall, and the steps down to the well head are short but worth taking carefully. The 15th of August, the Feast of the Assumption and the traditional pattern day here, would give some historical resonance to a visit, though the well can be approached at any time of year.