At Templemary in north Cork, the spring sits at the base of an ash tree on the western side of the Mallow to Liscarroll road, its sides and base stone-lined where the roots have not already done the work, shaped into a rough enclosure running northwest to southeast. What makes it stranger still is a limestone block placed on the southwest side, partially cut and bearing a holy water stoup, a small basin carved directly into one end of the stone. Into the side of that stoup someone has carved a Latin cross with splayed ends, the arms broadening slightly at their tips in a style seen across early Christian stonework in Ireland.

The limestone block did not originate here. Local tradition holds that it was salvaged from a nearby Roman Catholic church that was demolished sometime in the late 1970s or early 1980s, the stoup presumably rescued before the building came down and brought to the well for safekeeping or continued use. That church had a longer history than its end might suggest. The antiquarian James Grove White, writing between 1905 and 1925, recorded that it was thatched, which places it among a type of vernacular rural church that was already becoming rare in his time. Thatched Catholic churches survived in some parts of Ireland well into the nineteenth century, modest structures that made do with local materials, and the Templemary example was evidently one of the last traces of that tradition in this part of Cork.

The well is visited in May, in keeping with a widespread pattern of Maytime devotion at holy wells across Ireland, when the practice of "pattern" or pilgrimage walking would traditionally take place. The site sits in pasture, so visitors should expect to pick their way across a working field rather than follow a formal path. The carved stoup, modest in size at roughly thirty by thirty-nine centimetres, rewards close inspection; the cross incised into its side is easy to miss at first glance.