The belief was noted in the Ordnance Survey Letters of that year, which collected folklore and topographical detail from around Ireland, and it sits in the record without elaboration or explanation, which is somehow more unsettling than any gloss could be.

The well sits at the south-eastern end of the island, within the boundaries of a monastic settlement, and is dedicated to Saint Brendan, appearing under that name on both the 1838 and 1821 Ordnance Survey six-inch maps. Its construction is more elaborate than many holy wells, which are often little more than a stone-edged pool. Here, a penannular shaft, meaning a circular stone-lined pit open on one side, drops roughly two metres into the ground, with a diameter of about 1.2 metres. Eight stone steps, flanked by low walling, descend from ground level into the south-facing opening, giving the whole structure a keyhole shape when viewed from above. The pool at the base holds water to a depth of around half a metre. At ground level, a low drystone wall surrounds the well, though it is partly tumbled now, its courses loosely laid and worn with time.

The association with a monastic settlement and with Saint Brendan, the sixth-century navigator-saint strongly linked to the west of Ireland, places the well within a long tradition of sacred water sources maintained by early Christian communities. Holy wells in Ireland were frequently sites of pattern days, healing rites, and votive offerings, their pre-Christian significance absorbed and reframed rather than discarded. Whether the prohibition on women drawing water here reflects an older ritual boundary, a misremembered rule of monastic enclosure, or something else entirely, the 1838 record does not say.