On the 1933 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, a hachured feature, that is, a marking made up of short radiating lines used to suggest a hollow or earthwork, was recorded at this spot. It looked, on paper at least, like something worth noting. When someone finally went to look in 1983, it turned out to be a disused gravel pit, almost certainly dug sometime after 1700 to supply material for local building or road work.

The gap between the mapping and the inspection is itself quietly telling. For fifty years, a cartographic symbol sat on a sheet of paper implying the possibility of something older or more significant, until a visit reduced it to the mundane. Gravel pits of this kind were once commonplace features of the Irish rural landscape, dug by landowners or road gangs as needed and then abandoned once the immediate material was exhausted. They rarely leave much behind beyond a shallow scoop in the earth, softened over time by grass and weather.