It measures just 1.20 metres long by 0.90 metres wide and about 0.90 metres deep, an oval basin enclosed by medium-sized blocks of stone and fed directly by the passing water. Its scale is domestic, almost intimate, which is part of what makes it quietly arresting.

Holy wells are among the oldest continuously venerated sites in Ireland, their origins threading back through early Christian practice and, before that, into pre-Christian beliefs around the sanctity of water sources. Many were associated with local saints and were the focus of patterns, the traditional ritual gatherings involving prayer, circumambulation of the site, and sometimes offerings left at the well. The place name Templenabree suggests a connection to a church or ecclesiastical site, "temple" deriving from the Irish "teampall", meaning church, which hints that this corner of Sligo once held some local religious significance beyond the well itself. The marshy, streamside setting is typical; such wells were often sited at liminal, in-between places, where water emerged from or flowed through the earth in ways that seemed to invite reverence.