Hachures, the short radiating lines cartographers use to indicate a depression or slope, suggested something worth recording, a working hollow that had once served a practical purpose before falling out of use. When someone finally went to check, in 1983, what they found was a small overgrown hollow. The pit, whatever it had once been, had quietly disappeared back into the landscape.

The gap between the map and the ground is the whole story here. The OS 1:2500 series was a remarkably detailed survey, and the decision to mark even a disused gravel pit reflects the thoroughness of that enterprise. Gravel pits of this kind were commonplace features of rural Ireland, dug to provide aggregate for road repairs and local construction, then abandoned once the material was exhausted or no longer needed. By the time the surveyors passed through Eskerballycahill in the early twentieth century, this one was already finished. By the time anyone looked again, roughly seventy years later, even the hollow itself had softened into obscurity.