Quarry, Shannagh Beg, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Mining

Quarry, Shannagh Beg, Co. Galway

On an Ordnance Survey map from 1933, a small hachured area near Shannagh Beg in County Galway was recorded with the cartographic shorthand used to indicate uneven or broken ground.

Hachuring, a method of showing surface texture through short radiating lines, was the standard way surveyors noted depressions, spoil heaps, and excavated ground before more precise symbols became common. Whatever the original mapmakers made of it, the feature sat quietly on the page for decades before anyone looked more closely.

When the site was inspected in 1985, that mark resolved itself into something more specific: a disused limestone quarry pit. Limestone quarrying was once a mundane and widespread activity across Connacht, supplying material for field walls, building foundations, and the production of quicklime used to improve acidic soils. Small local pits like this one were worked informally by farmers and landowners rather than commercial operations, and because they served immediate agricultural or construction needs rather than trade, they rarely generated much documentary record. The 1933 map, then, is among the few traces of this particular pit\'s existence, capturing it at a point when it had already fallen out of use.

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