At Carrownrush in County Sligo, a midden was noted in connection with a nearby enclosure, yet by the time anyone went to look closely, there was nothing left to see. A midden, for the uninitiated, is essentially a prehistoric or early historic rubbish heap, typically composed of food waste such as shells, animal bones, and ash, and it can be one of the most informative deposits an archaeologist encounters, offering a direct window into what people ate and how they lived. This one, however, had either been obscured, disturbed, or perhaps misidentified from the outset.

The midden entered the official record when it was listed in the Record of Monuments and Places in 1998, associated with an enclosure at the same townland. No descriptive detail accompanied the entry, and the original source of the information was never established. When the site was inspected in 2003, no visible trace of the midden remained. Whether it had been ploughed out, eroded, or simply never corresponded to anything substantial on the ground, the record does not say. What remains is a placeholder, a site that exists on paper in a state of confirmed absence.