What makes it quietly arresting is not just its age or its dedication to a saint, but the care encoded in its construction: six stone steps descend to the water from the west-south-west, each step about 38 centimetres wide, worn into a rhythm that suggests generations of use. The well shaft itself is circular and drystone-lined, a little over a metre across and dropping nearly 1.7 metres at its deepest point, with a small kerb of upright stones running around its outer edge like a low collar.

The well is dedicated to St Couran, a figure who does not appear in the more widely circulated catalogues of Irish saints, which gives the site a certain local, intimate character. Holy wells of this kind were typically focal points for pattern days, the traditional devotional gatherings held on a saint's feast day, and many retained that function long after the Reformation reshaped religious practice elsewhere. At Tobercouran, the most intriguing physical evidence is a collection of broken inscribed stone fragments found in and around the well. Five of the six pieces fit together to form a rough pillar-like slab, approximately 78 centimetres long and just 7 centimetres thick, bearing the inscription SAINT COURNA beneath an IHS monogram, the Christogram formed from the first three letters of the Greek name for Jesus and common on Catholic devotional stonework from the early modern period onward. Further lettering below the dedication was too worn or damaged to read clearly. A separate uninscribed upright slab stood a few metres to the north, its purpose unrecorded.

The name on the reassembled slab, SAINT COURNA, introduces a small puzzle: it differs slightly from the well's own name, which preserves the form Couran. Whether this reflects regional variation in spelling, a different oral tradition, or simply the engraver's own rendering of an unfamiliar name is not clear. That ambiguity, combined with the fragmentary stone, gives the site the feeling of something that was once more legible and has since partially withdrawn from view.