The 1838 Ordnance Survey six-inch map records it as Tobernacla, a placename that most likely derives from the Irish tobar na cloiche, meaning the well of the stones. The boulders that surround the spring are not incidental, then; they are almost certainly what gave the place its identity in the first place.

Holy wells in Ireland occupy a category somewhere between the sacred and the geographical. They were rarely constructed in any formal sense; rather, a naturally occurring spring would accumulate devotional significance over time, often becoming associated with a local saint or with older, pre-Christian ideas about the sanctity of water emerging from the earth. At Tigroney, that significance is reinforced by the proximity of a possible church site nearby, suggesting this corner of Wicklow may once have formed a modest religious landscape, with the well and the ecclesiastical enclosure functioning in relation to one another. The well has been tidied and embellished in recent times, which is a common fate for sites of this kind; communities sometimes refresh them as acts of local piety or heritage maintenance, though the effect can occasionally smooth away the rougher historical texture.