These sites, known in Irish tradition as cillíní, were the quiet solution to a painful problem: infants who died before baptism were, under Catholic doctrine, considered ineligible for Christian burial. Rather than leave them without any marked resting place, families interred them in liminal ground, often at the edges of townlands, beside old earthworks, or within the ruins of early medieval enclosures. The Church did not sanction these burials, but communities maintained them across centuries with a kind of steady, unofficial devotion.

Cillíní are found throughout Ireland in their hundreds, and Clare has a considerable number. The practice of using them persisted well into the twentieth century in some areas, long after theological attitudes had begun to soften. The sites themselves are rarely elaborate: a low mounded area, sometimes with small unmarked stones, occasionally enclosed by a slight earthen bank. They tend to occupy places already understood as old or otherworldly, which may reflect a folk belief that such ground, though outside the jurisdiction of the parish church, carried its own sanctity. The Ballynoe example fits into this broader pattern, occupying a Clare landscape shaped by centuries of layered burial tradition, from prehistoric cairns through early Christian enclosures to exactly these informal but deeply felt communal spaces.

Very little documented detail about the Ballynoe site is currently available in the public record, which itself reflects something true of cillíní more generally. They were not the kinds of places that attracted official attention or architectural description. Their significance was local, passed on by memory rather than paperwork, which means many remain known only to the communities closest to them.