The well sits in fenced-off, low-lying scrubby ground close to the Carrowkeel River, reached by a small lane running north from Kilshanny Church. Its north-facing façade, just over two metres high and four metres wide, holds two rectangular recesses fitted with glass cases containing plaster statues of Our Lady and St Augustine. At ground level, a small oblong opening with a step gives access to the well itself, and a slab pavement runs along the front of the structure.

The well has been marked on Ordnance Survey maps since at least 1840, and the pattern held here on 28 August, the feast day of St Augustine, was once a substantial occasion. Eugene Curry, writing in the nineteenth century, documented the gathering, and later sources record that it drew large crowds of pilgrims along with associated horse-racing, continuing in that form until the 1940s. The devotional practice was not confined to the feast day, however; the well received visitors throughout the year. The prescribed round involved saying five Paters, five Aves, and five Glorias while moving clockwise around the well, repeated five times, before finishing at the front with a further Pater, an Ave, and a Creed. The cure offered was understood to extend to all ailments, and pilgrims would drink the water or apply it, along with moss taken from the well, to whatever part of the body needed healing. Sprigs from the ash tree that grew through the wellhouse were also carried home, suggesting the tree held its own significance within the devotion. It appears the wellhouse was actually constructed around the tree rather than the other way around, which makes the tree's eventual absence all the more felt.