What makes it quietly unsettling is not what is visible but what local tradition holds: that this is a children's burial ground, occupying the north-eastern quadrant of the enclosure.

The circular enclosure at Minanes belongs to a category of monument that recurs throughout the Irish landscape, often interpreted as the remains of a ringfort or early ecclesiastical enclosure, the circular boundary being a defining feature of early medieval settlement and sacred space in Ireland. Children's burial grounds of this type are known in Irish as cillíní, places where unbaptised infants were interred outside the formal rites of the Church, often in liminal locations: old enclosures, boundaries, the edges of townlands. The association between pre-existing circular earthworks and informal burial is well documented across Munster. At Minanes, the ground is slightly raised in the north-eastern area, suggesting accumulated burials beneath the surface, though no grave markers have been recorded there.