The well, known in Irish as Tobar Fhionáin, is easy to walk past without knowing what you are looking at: a lintelled roof, vegetation crowding in on all sides, and little else to signal its former significance. Holy wells of this kind were typically enclosed with modest stone canopies to protect the water and mark the site as sacred, though this one has largely been reclaimed by the surrounding growth.

The well is dedicated to St Finan, as is the nearby medieval church at Killemlagh, a short distance to the east, suggesting that this particular stretch of the Iveragh Peninsula was a place of some importance in the cult of that saint. Rounds, the traditional practice of walking a prescribed circuit around a sacred site while reciting prayers, were made here on the 16th of March, according to a record published by Crawford in 1915. The well was also part of a longer pattern of devotion: it featured as one of the stops on the Dungeagan-Coomanaspig turas, a pilgrimage route visited on the 29th of September. A turas, meaning journey in Irish, typically linked a series of sacred sites across a landscape, and this one connected multiple wells and places of prayer across the local terrain. Whether the rounds at St Finan's Well continued into the twentieth century or faded out earlier is not recorded, but the structure itself survives, quietly marking a landscape that was once walked with intention on specific days of the year.