Children's Burying Ground, Ballyterrim, Co. Galway

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Burial Grounds

Children’s Burying Ground, Ballyterrim, Co. Galway

On a slight rise above otherwise flat farmland in north Galway, a small enclosure holds a particular kind of quiet.

It is a cillin, the Irish term for an unconsecrated burial ground traditionally used for unbaptised infants, and for others considered ineligible for burial in sanctified ground. These sites are scattered across the Irish landscape in their hundreds, often anonymous and easy to overlook, tucked against field boundaries or rising ground where they have accumulated generations of grief with very little ceremony.

This example at Ballyterrim is subrectangular in plan, measuring roughly fifteen metres east to west and twelve metres north to south. Its northern edge is defined by a low bank of earth and stone, while the southern boundary follows an existing field wall running east to west. No enclosing element survives at the eastern or western sides. The ground within slopes from the north-east down toward the south-west, and irregularly shaped grave-markers are scattered across the interior. In the north-east corner, a pile of stones has accumulated, the kind of feature common to these sites, where stones placed on graves gradually gather and consolidate over time. The condition of the site is described as fair, which in the context of a cillin is perhaps as much as one could hope for.

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