Holy wells dedicated to Colmcille, the sixth-century monk from Donegal who founded monasteries across Ireland and Scotland before settling on the isle of Iona, are scattered across the island in considerable numbers. That proliferation is itself worth pausing on: it speaks to the reach of his cult and to the way landscape was mapped, in early medieval Ireland, according to sacred biography rather than administrative boundary.

Colmcille, also known as Columba, is said to have been born around 521 AD and died on Iona in 597. His association with wells, springs, and water sources throughout the north and west of Ireland reflects the wider practice of Christianising older sacred sites by attaching them to a recognised saint's name and feast day. The well at Ardoley fits within that long tradition. Such sites were typically the focus of a pattern day, a local annual gathering combining religious observance with communal activity, usually held on or near the saint's feast day, the ninth of June in Colmcille's case. The rounds performed at holy wells, involving prayer, circumambulation, and often the tying of cloth or the leaving of small offerings, were a form of devotion that persisted well into the modern era in the west of Ireland, sometimes despite official Church disapproval.

The well's precise condition and current accessibility are not documented in available records, which is not unusual for sites of this kind in rural Mayo. Many holy wells survive as modest, easily overlooked features in the landscape, marked by nothing more than a low stone surround, a scattering of weathered offerings, or a hawthorn tree hung with faded cloth. Others have fallen into disuse or become overgrown. The townland of Ardoley itself remains a quiet corner of the county, and the well, whatever its present state, carries a name that connects a small patch of ground to a saint whose influence once stretched from the Irish midlands to the Atlantic edge of Scotland.