What makes it quietly unusual is the particular kind of forgetting it represents: people once walked rounds here, performing the slow, prescribed circuits of prayer and petition that characterised holy well devotions across Ireland, and then, at some point, they stopped.

The well appears on the 1842 Ordnance Survey six-inch map under the name Tobertaghlaghnan, which a 1934 study by Bowman translates and expands as Tobar Tighe Lachtnan, meaning the well of the house of Laghtnan. The "tobar" element is simply the Irish word for well, and these named wells were frequently associated with a local saint or a significant household, the name preserving a memory of whoever or whatever once gave the place its significance. Bowman noted, even by 1934, that the rounds had long since been discontinued. The practice of "doing the rounds" at a holy well typically involved walking a set number of circuits, often barefoot, while reciting prayers, sometimes at specific stations marked by stones or crosses. That this custom had already faded by the early twentieth century suggests the well's active devotional life ended some considerable time before it was recorded.