In the Townparks area of County Galway, a feature that appeared on the 1944 to 1945 revision of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map as a hachured marking, the cartographic convention used to suggest a depression or hollow in the ground, turned out on physical inspection in 1982 to be nothing more dramatic than a waterlogged pit, possibly the remnant of a disused quarry.

The gap between the map and the reality is, in its own small way, revealing. Hachures on OS maps were drawn to indicate slope and relief, and a hollow of any kind could earn such markings without anyone being entirely sure what had made it. When someone finally went to look in 1982, the feature had no great age behind it, dating to after 1700, and no archaeological significance that would place it within the scope of formal prehistoric or early medieval survey. It was simply a hole, probably dug for building stone or lime at some point in the post-medieval period, and subsequently left to fill with water. Quarrying of this kind was commonplace across rural and urban Ireland as towns expanded and local materials were extracted for construction, road-making, or burning in lime kilns to produce agricultural lime or mortar. Most such workings left behind little more than a scar in the ground.