The well is not beside the road, or near it, but actually under it, enclosed within a sandstone arch so that traffic passes overhead while water moves below. It is the kind of arrangement that invites a second look, a reminder that the landscape of rural Ireland was sometimes organised around water sources first and infrastructure second.

The well appears on the Ordnance Survey map of 1840 under the name St Patrick's Well, suggesting it was already well established and locally significant by the time the surveyors came through. The sandstone arch that carries the road overhead bears a dated keystone reading A.D. 1844, meaning the roadway was built or formalised just a few years after the map was made, presumably to accommodate rather than eliminate the spring. The folklorist Caoimhín Ó Danachair, writing in 1955, recorded it as a strong, clear, bubbling spring and noted that it had formerly been visited on the 17th of March, the feast day of St Patrick. Holy wells associated with a particular saint were commonly visited on that saint's feast day, with prayers, rounds, and sometimes the leaving of votive offerings. By the time Ó Danachair was writing, those formal devotions had ceased at Duntryleague, but the well had not been forgotten entirely. Children were still visiting it and calling out to the water directly, saying either "Boil up, St Patrick's Well" or "Bubble up, Blessed Well", a small, informal ritual that had survived the fading of the older religious practice around it.

The well sits in the townland of Duntryleague in the south of County Limerick, and the keystone arch is the most visible feature to look for if you are trying to locate it. The spring itself is beneath the road surface, so what a visitor sees is the stonework of the arch rather than open water, though the source described by Ó Danachair was vigorous enough that its movement may still be audible or faintly visible depending on conditions. The area is quiet and rural, and the well is easy to pass without noticing if you do not already know it is there.