It is not the kind of thing that announces itself. From a distance it reads simply as a slight rise in the ground, and only the ironwork at its heart gives the game away.

The platform is built into a gentle north-east-facing slope, with the scarp that defines its edge cut deeper into the hillside on the uphill side, reaching about one and a half metres in height, while the downhill side amounts to little more than a low lip. The 1838 Ordnance Survey six-inch map makes no mention of it, but by the time the more detailed twenty-five-inch plan was produced it appears clearly, marked with a hachured circle and labelled simply "Pump". The structure dates to after 1700, and its purpose was practical rather than ceremonial: it drew water for a substantial building located roughly 140 metres to the south-west. That building has had more than one life. The twenty-five-inch plan names it as Errew House, described there as a hotel; by the time the revised six-inch edition appeared in 1922, the same building was recorded as a Convent. The pump, quietly serving whoever occupied the house, outlasted both identities.