On the 1932 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, a hachured feature, meaning a small area marked with short radiating lines to suggest a depression or earthwork of some kind, caught enough attention to be earmarked for closer inspection. When that inspection eventually came, in 1983, the feature turned out to be an overgrown and long-abandoned gravel pit, unremarkable in origin and post-dating 1700.

The significance of that date is procedural rather than arbitrary. Sites that post-date AD 1700 fall outside the scope of the Archaeological Survey of Ireland, which focuses on the prehistoric and early historic record. A gravel pit dug sometime in the eighteenth century or later would have served a thoroughly practical purpose, providing loose aggregate for road-making or land drainage, and would have been commonplace across rural Connacht. Once exhausted and left alone, such pits tend to soften at the edges, fill with scrub and rushes, and gradually take on the appearance of something older and more deliberate than they ever were. That is precisely what seems to have happened here, convincingly enough to earn the site a mark on a mid-twentieth-century map and, eventually, a visit from someone with a clipboard.