A small quarry near Tully in County Sligo earned a curious footnote in Irish heritage documentation simply by being mistaken for something far older.

A field report from 1991, drawn from an earlier survey file, recorded what it described as a souterrain associated with the nearby Tully ringfort. A souterrain is an underground stone-lined passage, typically constructed during the early medieval period and associated with ringfort settlements, used variously for storage, refuge, or ventilation. The connection to the Tully ringfort, a known site in the locality, would have made such a feature plausible enough on paper. On closer inspection, however, the feature turned out to be nothing more than a small quarry, a working hollow cut into the ground for extracting stone or other material, with no archaeological significance whatsoever. The mix-up is a small but telling reminder of how easily a landscape feature, especially an unassuming depression or void in the earth, can be read as ancient when scrutinised only at a distance or through prior assumptions.