It sits quietly now, about twenty metres south of the river, in ground that gives little indication of its former significance. The Irish name for it, Tobar San Séain, simply means St. James's Well, and that straightforward naming belies a longer tradition of communal religious practice that drew people here regularly for generations.

The well was the site of a pattern, the distinctly Irish custom of gathering at a holy well on a saint's feast day to pray, walk prescribed circuits, and observe rituals that often blended Catholic devotion with much older practices. According to the Kilkenny historian William Carrigan, writing in 1905, the well attracted pilgrims in the usual manner associated with such places. The pattern day fell on the last Sunday in July, loosely connected to the feast of St. James the Apostle on 25 July, and it continued in some form until at least the early years of the twentieth century. By the time O'Kelly wrote about it in 1969, the gatherings had already ceased, leaving the well without the annual occasion that had defined it for so long.