Burial ground, Rathard, Co. Cork

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Burial Grounds

Burial ground, Rathard, Co. Cork

A hilly pasture field in Rathard, County Cork holds no visible sign of what it once was.

Locally it is known as "the killeen", a term used across Ireland for informal burial grounds where unbaptised infants were interred separately from consecrated churchyards. For centuries, canon law excluded such children from Christian burial, and communities responded by quietly designating their own places at the margins, often in fields, at crossroads, or near ancient earthworks. This particular killeen left no surface trace at all, no mounds, no stones, no markers of any kind. Its identity survives only in the local name and in the memory attached to it.

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Pete F
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