In a stretch of undulating reclaimed pastureland near Kilmore in County Galway, there is a shallow hollow in the ground, the remnant of a small sand pit that has long since fallen out of use. It is easy to walk past without a second glance, and that, in a way, is part of what makes it interesting.

The site came to light through one of those small acts of cartographic detective work that fieldwork occasionally demands. On the 1931 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, a hachured feature, meaning a cluster of short lines used by cartographers to suggest a depression or slope in the terrain, was marked at this location. When the ground was inspected in 1986, that mark turned out to correspond to a disused sand pit, identifiable now only by the hollow it left behind. The pit is thought to date from the nineteenth or early twentieth century, a period when local extraction of sand and gravel was common across rural Ireland for use in building, road maintenance, and agricultural improvement. The surrounding pastureland itself is reclaimed ground, which adds another layer to the modest industrial history of the area.