Yet this modest well at Caherclogh, tucked into low-lying ground between hills in County Tipperary, may have served precisely that function for centuries, marking not just a watering place for cattle but a boundary recognised in law and recorded on paper.

The Civil Survey of 1654 to 1656, a detailed administrative effort carried out under Cromwellian governance to document land ownership and parish limits across Ireland, describes the boundaries of the parish of Rathronan by reference to a series of physical landmarks. One of those markers is named 'Tobburnegragy', which appears to correspond to what is now known as Graigue Well. The Irish word 'tobar' means well, and its appearance in a mid-seventeenth-century boundary description suggests that this particular spring, fed by a stream rising from a natural outcrop face to the north-east, was already a recognised point of reference in the local landscape long before it was formally recorded. The stream flows south-east along a field boundary, a detail that reinforces the sense of a place where water and territorial division have long coincided.