Wells of this kind, known in Irish as tobar, were focal points of local devotion long before and long after the arrival of Christianity in Ireland, often gathering layers of belief around a single water source over many centuries. The name Tobercolman points to a dedication to one of the several early Irish saints who bore that name, and its position on Slievemore places it in an area of remarkable archaeological density, on a mountain that contains megalithic tombs, a deserted village, and traces of human activity stretching back thousands of years.

Slievemore's deserted village, which runs along the mountain's southern base, was largely abandoned during and after the Great Famine of the 1840s, though some families returned seasonally for a practice known as booleying, moving livestock to upland pastures in summer. Holy wells in such landscapes often served as places of pattern, a term for the localised festivals of prayer and communal gathering held on a patron saint's feast day, which in rural Ireland frequently blended formal Catholic observance with older folk customs. Whether Tobercolman was a site of active pattern tradition, and which St Colman it honours, are questions the available record does not yet answer clearly.