Quarry, Trust, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Mining
In the undulating pastureland of Trust, County Galway, there is a small pit in the ground that was once considered interesting enough to investigate, and whose principal distinction turned out to be that it was not interesting enough to investigate further.
That is, in its own quiet way, a kind of story.
On the 1933 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, the site appears as a hachured feature, the series of short radiating lines that cartographers used to suggest a depression or earthwork in the landscape. When someone eventually went to look in 1983, they found a disused quarry pit, small and post-medieval in date. Because it was established to be more recent than AD 1700, it fell outside the scope of formal archaeological recording, which in Ireland generally concerns itself with earlier remains. So it was noted, dated approximately, and set aside.