On the Ordnance Survey six-inch map revised in 1944 to 1945, a hachured marking, the kind of shading cartographers use to suggest a depression or earthwork of some kind, sits within the pastureland of Eyrecourt Demesne in County Galway. It has the visual grammar of archaeological significance. When someone finally went to look in 1984, they found an oval hollow, trees growing up through it, and a quantity of stones and soil that farmers had tipped in over the years when clearing the surrounding fields.

What the 1984 inspection confirmed was a disused gravel pit, the sort of feature that demesnes across Ireland once relied on for road-making and drainage work within their grounds. The depression itself is the main surviving trace, partially filled but still legible as a scooped-out form in the landscape. The trees that have colonised it since its working days give it a slightly more dramatic appearance than its origins might warrant, which is presumably what caused the cartographic ambiguity in the first place.