Somewhere in a wooded hollow on a north-facing slope in County Waterford, a circular well dedicated to Saint Columkille sits beneath a stone canopy, its more intriguing companions now out of sight. When nineteenth-century antiquarians visited and described the site, they recorded not only the well itself but also a carved stone head built into the canopy structure and a possible bullaun stone nearby. Bullaun stones are boulders or slabs bearing one or more cup-shaped hollows, often associated with early Christian sites and sometimes thought to have been used for grinding or for holding water with curative or ritual significance. The head and the bullaun, if they were ever as described, are no longer visible to the casual eye.

The well's veneration was documented in the 1890s, when local antiquarian G. O'C. Redmond gathered observations on the history and traditions of western County Waterford. M. J. C. Buckley, writing in 1896 in connection with nearby Kilmolash Church outside Cappoquin, added the detail about the carved stone head set into the canopy. Holy wells dedicated to Columkille, the sixth-century monk and missionary more widely associated with Iona and Derry, are scattered across Ireland, and their persistence into the modern period often reflects deep continuities in local devotional practice rather than any direct institutional connection to the saint himself. This one, tucked into its wooded depression, was still a place of active veneration within living memory of those nineteenth-century writers.

The circular well with its canopy survives, though what remains today is quieter than the accounts suggest it once was. The site lies on a gentle slope, sheltered by trees, and the canopy structure that once incorporated the carved head is still present even if the carvings themselves have either been removed or are obscured. It is the kind of place where the absence of something becomes as telling as what is there.