Quarry, Skecoor, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Mining
On a low hillock in the pastureland of Skecoor, a series of grass-covered mounds and hollows sits quietly in the landscape, looking to the untrained eye like nothing more particular than uneven ground.
It takes a certain kind of attention, and a certain kind of map, to understand what they represent.
The site first appeared as a hachured feature on the 1945 revision of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, those fine hatched marks that cartographers used to suggest rising or broken ground. When someone finally went out to look in 1984, the feature turned out to be a quarry, its original cuts and spoil heaps long since softened by turf and time. Because the quarry dates to after 1700, it falls outside the scope of archaeological classification in Ireland, which tends to concern itself with earlier remains. That boundary means the site occupies a curious administrative gap: visible enough to be mapped, significant enough to be inspected, but formally counted as belonging to no particular heritage category.