The surveyor's note is matter-of-fact about it: the well was simply no longer visited for religious purposes. That quiet abandonment, recorded so plainly, gives the site a particular kind of melancholy. The well sits roughly 74 metres south-west of the church of St Kieran, a proximity that once made geographical and spiritual sense when the two formed part of the same sacred landscape.

The well is one of three in County Kilkenny dedicated to St Kieran, the sixth-century founder of the monastery at Clonmacnoise. According to the historian William Carrigan, writing in 1905, the three wells were not independent destinations but formed a linked pilgrimage route. Penitents would begin at the well in Cappagh townland and conclude their rounds at a second well situated approximately 530 metres to the north-north-east. A third well in the sequence remains unlocated. Holy wells of this kind were typically visited on a patron day associated with the dedicatee saint, with prayers said and the well circumambulated in a prescribed direction, a practice known as making the rounds. The fact that this one had already been abandoned before the mid-nineteenth century suggests the tradition attached to it had weakened earlier still, perhaps as the Catholic population in the area shifted or as the pilgrimage route consolidated around the other wells.

When the site was visited in 1989, the well was heavily overgrown, which is consistent with a place that had seen no regular attention for well over a century.