When a survey of the Clonmacnoise area was conducted in 1987, the well was recorded as a holy well, the kind of site typically associated with a patron saint, a pattern day, or a tradition of votive offerings. Subsequent examination, however, suggests it has no religious associations at all, and is most likely a straightforward secular well.

The distinction matters more than it might seem. Holy wells are a deeply embedded feature of the Irish landscape, often predating Christianity and later absorbed into it, acquiring dedications to local saints and becoming focal points for communal ritual. To be initially catalogued as one and then reclassified is a quiet reminder that the line between the sacred and the functional was not always obvious even to those who mapped these things. The well sits within the broader Clonmacnoise area, a stretch of the Shannon midlands where early medieval monastic activity was dense enough that almost any old feature of the landscape risks being drawn into a religious orbit. Corlains Well, it seems, resisted that pull, or at least the evidence for it has not survived.