These burial grounds, known in Irish as cilliní, were used for centuries as the resting places of unbaptised infants, who, under the doctrinal conventions of the time, were considered ineligible for burial in consecrated ground. Families brought their children to these marginal spaces instead, places that occupied a threshold, physically and spiritually, between the sanctioned world of the parish and something older and less defined.

The name Toberaniddaun is itself suggestive. The tobar element is the Irish word for a well, and many cilliní were established in proximity to holy wells, places that had held sacred significance long before Christianity formalised the landscape. The combination of a children's burial ground with a well-place points to the layered way in which communities worked with sites over long periods, adapting earlier sacred associations to new spiritual needs. Cilliní are found throughout Clare and the wider west of Ireland, often at the edges of fields, beside ancient boundaries, or on ground that was in some way set apart from ordinary agricultural use. They are typically unmarked or marked only by small undressed stones, and their locations were passed down through local memory rather than formal record.