The connection is not incidental. This well is named for St. James of Compostela, the same apostle whose reputed remains, discovered in the early ninth century, gave rise to the Camino pilgrimage that still draws hundreds of thousands of walkers each year across the Iberian Peninsula. That a modest rectangular well, roughly a metre wide and sixty centimetres deep, roofed by a single flat lintel, should share its patron with one of medieval Europe's great pilgrimage destinations is quietly remarkable.

The antiquarian John O'Donovan, writing around 1840, recorded that a pattern, the Irish tradition of communal prayer and celebration at a sacred site on a saint's feast day, was held at this well on St. James's Day, the 25th of July, until approximately 1820. The practice then ceased, leaving the well without the ritual life that once defined it. St. James the Greater was, according to the Gospels, among the closest of Christ's disciples, present at the Transfiguration, the Last Supper, and in the Garden of Gethsemane. He was martyred in Jerusalem in 43 AD. The tradition that his remains were subsequently brought to Spain and installed at Compostela drove an enormous medieval pilgrimage movement, one that carried political weight in rallying the Christian kingdoms of northern Spain during the long period of Muslim rule over much of the Iberian Peninsula.

Today the well is approached by concrete steps from the south, and the masonry structure remains intact, its lintel measuring just over a metre in length. There is, however, no evidence of ongoing veneration. The pattern that O'Donovan described has been gone for two centuries, and the well sits quietly beside its church, unremarked by most who pass.