A cillín, for those unfamiliar with the term, is an informal or unconsecrated burial ground, most commonly used for unbaptised infants who were excluded by Catholic practice from burial in sanctified ground. These sites are scattered across the Irish countryside in considerable numbers, yet many are now all but invisible, and the one at Morenane is precisely that kind of place.

The site sits on a patch of waste ground caught between a road to the north-west and a working quarry to the south-east, two kinds of pressure that between them have done little to preserve the integrity of what lies there. When Denis Power recorded the site in August 2011, there were no evident surface remains of the burial ground itself. The area was strewn with stones and overgrown with thistle and nettles. The only clue that something deliberate might underlie the scrub was the relative absence of heavy overgrowth in the area corresponding to the plot marked on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, a roughly rectangular space of approximately ten metres north-east to south-west and eight metres north-west to south-east. A mound of earth about 1.2 metres high to the north-east is most likely spoil from the adjacent quarry rather than anything of archaeological significance.

For anyone trying to locate the site, the OS six-inch map remains the most reliable guide to where the burial ground was recorded, since there is little on the ground itself to confirm you have found the right spot. The working quarry nearby means the surrounding landscape is subject to change, and the general disorder of the waste ground makes orientation difficult. What you are looking for is essentially a quieter patch within the disorder, a subtle clearing in the nettles and thistles that only becomes legible if you already know what you are looking for and why it might matter.