The one at Dunnamaggan, in the south of County Kilkenny, is a registered monument, which means it has been formally recognised as a site of archaeological or historical significance, yet the formal record holds almost nothing about it beyond its existence and location. That combination, acknowledged but undescribed, is itself quietly telling. These sites were often places of patterns, the annual gatherings at which people came to pray, to tie cloth to nearby branches, and to drink or bathe in water believed to carry curative properties. Many were associated with a named saint, the well serving as a kind of local focal point for devotion that pre-dated the parish church and sometimes outlasted it.