Burial ground, Graddoge, Co. Galway

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Burial Grounds

Burial ground, Graddoge, Co. Galway

In a field at Graddoge in north County Galway, a cluster of grass-covered stones marks what may be a burial ground, tucked inside the earthworks of a medieval moated site.

The stones are not dramatic; they sit flush with the ground, concentrated in the north-eastern and south-eastern corners of the enclosure, easy to miss without knowing what you are looking for. That quiet ambiguity is part of what makes the place unusual.

Moated sites are a feature of the medieval Irish landscape, typically consisting of a rectangular or sub-rectangular platform surrounded by a water-filled or earthen ditch, associated with Anglo-Norman settlement from roughly the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The presence of graves within such an enclosure at Graddoge raises questions that have not been fully resolved. The site may represent a cillín, sometimes written as CBG or children's burial ground, a type of informal cemetery used in Ireland well into the twentieth century for the interment of unbaptised infants and others excluded from consecrated ground. Alternatively, it may have served as a more general local burial ground, unaffiliated with any parish church. The two possibilities are not always easy to distinguish archaeologically, and no definitive identification has been made.

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