That might not sound like much, but it has a quiet cartographic history behind it: for decades it existed on paper as a hachured feature, the fine radiating lines that nineteenth and early twentieth-century Ordnance Survey draughtsmen used to indicate a depression or earthwork in the landscape. On the 1922 edition of the six-inch OS map, the feature sat there, ambiguous and unverified, until someone finally went to look.

That inspection came in 1984, when the overgrowth on the island was pushed back far enough to confirm that the mark on the map corresponded to an actual pit, most likely a small quarry of some kind worked after 1700. Because it post-dates that threshold, it falls outside the scope of prehistoric and early historic monument recording, which is why it occupies a curious administrative no-man's-land, noted but not formally classified as an archaeological site. Lee's Island itself sits in Lough Corrib, the large limestone lake that straddles the Galway and Mayo border, and like many of the lough's islands it is heavily vegetated and difficult to move through. The pit, described as being towards the centre of the island, would be easy to walk past without knowing what you were looking for.