Killamurroogh Grave Yard, Murrooghkilly, Co. Clare

Co. Clare |

Burial Grounds

Killamurroogh Grave Yard, Murrooghkilly, Co. Clare

A few hundred metres back from the Atlantic coast of County Clare, in a stretch of improved pasture close to the sand-dunes, lies a roughly rectangular enclosure with no headstones, no visible church, and no obvious sign that it is a burial ground at all.

The ground inside is uneven and overgrown, its boundaries formed partly by a modern field wall, partly by accumulated field clearance material, and partly by a low natural scarp. It is the kind of place a person could walk past without a second glance, yet it has been marked on maps going back to the Ordnance Survey's six-inch edition of 1840, where it appears under its current name.

Locally, the site is understood to be a children's burial ground, a category of place known in Ireland as a cillín (sometimes also spelled cillin). These were informal burial grounds, often located at ancient or ecclesiastical sites, where unbaptised infants and others excluded from consecrated churchyard burial were interred, usually without ceremony and rarely with lasting markers. The practice reflects centuries of Catholic doctrine on limbo and the requirements for Christian burial, and the sites themselves were typically kept at a respectful distance from official religious life. Tim Robinson's map of the area, published in 1977, identifies this site as a children's burial ground, and a 1991 study by Swan classified it as both a church site and a burial ground, suggesting the enclosure may preserve the outline of a much earlier ecclesiastical foundation, even if no structural trace of any building remains above ground.

The site sits roughly 150 metres east of the dune system and about 800 metres from the sea. Visitors should expect rough, uneven ground underfoot and no formal access or signage. The boundaries are worth examining closely; the low scarp along the south-western edge and the scatter of clearance stone along the other sides are the most tangible indicators of the enclosure's extent and age.

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