Two features marked on the 1932 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of this part of County Galway carry hachuring, the fine lines cartographers used to suggest relief or depression in the ground. To anyone reading the map, they might suggest earthworks, enclosures, or something older still, sitting in undulating pastureland edged to the south by bogland.

When the features were physically inspected in 1984, the answer turned out to be considerably more mundane. The depressions were pits, most likely disused sand pits, and dated to after 1700. A companion pit lies roughly 27 metres to the south-west. Because they fall within the post-medieval period, they sit outside the scope of formal archaeological classification, which in Ireland generally concerns itself with features predating AD 1700. And so they occupy a quiet liminal space, too recent to be ancient, too old and forgotten to be part of any living industrial memory, noted and then set aside.