Concrete-lined and open to the sky, it measures roughly one and a half metres across and just sixty centimetres deep, and a pipe running below the waterline now feeds a nearby house. It is, in other words, a functional piece of domestic infrastructure, which makes it easy to overlook what it used to be.

At some point in the past, this was a site of patterns, the Irish term for a pattern day, from the Latin "patronus", referring to a patron saint. Pattern days were annual gatherings at holy wells, combining religious observance, communal ritual, and often music, dancing, and trade. They were a deeply rooted feature of Irish popular devotion, frequently attached to a local saint's feast day, and they persisted in many areas well into the nineteenth century despite periodic disapproval from Church authorities. At Glenwood, local memory preserves the knowledge that such gatherings happened here, though the well has long since passed out of holy use. No specific saint, no particular feast day, and no record of when the patterns ceased has been retained in what survives.