Hachures, the short radiating lines cartographers use to indicate a depression or slope in the terrain, marked this spot as something worthy of note, though what exactly it represented was not immediately clear from the map alone. When the site was visited in 1985, the feature turned out to be a disused gravel pit, the kind of working that would have supplied raw material for local road-making or construction, and which, once exhausted, was simply left to the land.