Hachuring, the old cartographic convention of short radiating lines used to suggest a slope or hollow, indicated something worth noting, though the map offered no further explanation. It took until 1984 for anyone to go and look properly, at which point the feature turned out to be a disused sand pit, its irregular depression long since colonised by bushes and trees.

There is a particular quality to places that maps remember but people have largely forgotten. The sand pit at Eyrecourt would have served a practical purpose in its time, sand being a basic material in mortar, drainage, and general estate maintenance. Demesnes like Eyrecourt, the landed estate surrounding the village of the same name in east Galway, typically required a steady supply of such materials for the upkeep of walls, outbuildings, and grounds. Once exhausted or no longer needed, extraction pits were simply abandoned, left to flood, silt over, or, as here, gradually disappear beneath scrubby vegetation until the hollow in the ground was the only evidence that any digging had ever taken place.