Children's burial ground, Spunkane, Co. Kerry

The site is recorded as a ceallúnach, the Irish term for an unconsecrated burial ground used specifically for unbaptised children. These places occupy a peculiar position in the landscape and in social memory: neither fully part of the Church nor entirely outside it, they were where families laid infants who had died before baptism and were therefore, under Catholic theological convention, denied burial in consecrated ground.

The Iveragh Peninsula, on which Spunkane sits, is one of the most archaeologically layered parts of Kerry, and ceallúnaigh are among its more quietly significant features. The upright slabs noted at this site are thought, on the basis of local information, to mark individual burials within the northern interior of the enclosure. Such markers are often modest to the point of near-invisibility, rough fieldstones rather than inscribed monuments, which is part of why these sites so often escape wider notice. The practice of burying unbaptised infants in separate, marginal grounds persisted in Ireland well into the twentieth century, and the emotional weight carried by these places in local communities was, and sometimes still is, considerable.