Burial ground, Coolbane By.), Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Burial Grounds
In the townland of Coolbane in West Cork, inside the earthen banks of an ancient ringfort, lies a children's burial ground that was already considered old enough to map by 1842.
That the Ordnance Survey cartographers labelled it simply 'Children's Burial Gd.' on their six-inch map suggests it was a recognised feature of the local landscape, understood without needing elaboration.
The burial ground sits within a ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead typically dating from the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to twelfth centuries, defined by one or more circular earthen banks and ditches. These structures were later absorbed into folk belief as fairy forts, which may partly explain why this particular one came to serve as a cillin, the Irish term for an unconsecrated burial ground used for unbaptised infants and others who could not be interred in consecrated church ground. The practice of burying children in such liminal places, older sites on the edges of settled land, was widespread across Ireland and persisted in some areas well into the twentieth century. The co-location here of a cillin within a ringfort speaks to the layered significance these earthworks held in rural communities long after their original agricultural purpose had ended.
The interior of the ringfort had become inaccessible due to heavy overgrowth, meaning the physical evidence of the burials themselves remains unseen and undisturbed beneath the vegetation.