One stood just outside the southern wall of the old graveyard; the other lay inside it, roughly thirty metres to the north. Holy wells in Ireland were typically modest features, sometimes little more than a stone-lined spring or a seeping hollow, venerated for their association with a local saint and visited on feast days. Here, even that modest physical presence has gone, leaving only the map record and a faint irregularity in the ground as evidence that anything was ever there.

Both wells were dedicated to St. Manchán of Lemanaghan, a saint whose name travels through the historical record in several spellings: Managhan, Menaghan, Moynaghan. Lemanaghan, his principal site, lies in Co. Offaly. In the parish of Kilcleagh, his feast day was observed on the 29th of September. The wells appear clearly on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1838, at which point both are shown outside the graveyard boundary, which is itself only indicated by a dotted outline rather than a solid wall. By the 1910 OS twenty-five-inch edition, the boundary had solidified and one of the wells had been absorbed inside it. Fieldwork carried out in 1979 found a shallow depression running roughly west-northwest to east-southeast across the relevant spot, interpreted as part of an old field system. A second visit in 1982 found no trace of the well itself, though a depression in the field surface was thought to indicate a covered stream or drain near where the map showed it standing.