Far fewer pause to notice a small opening at the base of one of those structures, an opening barely large enough to reach a hand through, which has carried the name of the archangel himself for as long as maps have recorded it.

St Michael's Well is not a well in the conventional sense. It is a slab-lined recess, a cistern of sorts, built into the foundation of the stepped platform that supports one of the monastery's clocháns, the dry-stone beehive huts that have defined the island's silhouette since the early medieval period. The structure faces outward onto the terrace through an ope, an opening in the stonework, measuring 0.73 metres wide and just 0.26 metres high. That modest aperture is about all a visitor sees of it from the outside. The feature was recorded and described in detail by O'Sullivan and Sheehan in 1996, who noted both its construction and its named presence on the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps, suggesting it had long been regarded as something distinct from the fabric of the monastic buildings surrounding it. Whether it collected rainwater for the community, served a ritual function, or simply acquired its sacred designation over centuries of association with the site is not entirely clear, but the name alone places it within a widespread Irish tradition of attributing holy significance to water sources connected with particular saints or dedications.