The enclosure is modest, just 2.8 metres by 2.25 metres, with an entrance gap facing north, but its plainness is part of the point. Modern offerings left at the site confirm that people still come, still leave something behind, still observe whatever private ritual the place demands.

The well's proper Irish name is Tobar Fhlannáin, meaning the well of Flannán, a reference to Saint Flannan, the seventh-century bishop associated with Killaloe in County Clare whose cult spread across a surprisingly wide geography. Holy wells, in the Irish tradition, are natural springs believed to carry curative or sacred properties, typically linked to a patron saint whose feast day would once have marked the main occasion for visiting. The proximity of the well to the church beside Lough Nakilla follows a familiar pattern in early Christian Ireland, where sacred water sources and ecclesiastical sites were deliberately paired, or where a pre-Christian spring was absorbed into Christian practice. The site appears in James Hardiman's writings from 1846 and in O'Flanagan's notes from 1927, suggesting it had already attracted antiquarian attention well before the mid-twentieth century references compiled by Lord Killanin and Michael Duignan.