When someone finally went out to look at it in person, in 1982, the feature turned out to be a disused sand pit, almost certainly dug sometime after 1700. That gap between map symbol and ground truth is a small but telling reminder of how much local industrial activity went unrecorded beyond the incidental marks of a surveyor's pen.

Sand pits of this kind were a practical feature of the post-medieval rural landscape across Ireland, typically dug to supply building material for lime mortar, land improvement, or road maintenance. They rarely attracted formal documentation, and because this one post-dates AD 1700, it falls outside the period covered by archaeological survey programmes focused on earlier remains. Its appearance on the OS map, even as an ambiguous hachured symbol, is arguably the most complete record it has ever received.