Children's burial ground, Abbeyfeale, Co. Limerick

Co. Limerick |

Burial Grounds

Children’s burial ground, Abbeyfeale, Co. Limerick

On a northwest-facing hillside outside Abbeyfeale, a roughly circular patch of pasture sits enclosed by a low earthen bank with no visible entrance.

That absence is not accidental. This is a cillín, the old Irish term for an unconsecrated burial ground used for those who could not be interred in sanctified earth, most commonly infants who died before baptism. For centuries, Catholic doctrine held that the unbaptised could not enter heaven, and so they could not enter the churchyard either. Families buried them instead in liminal places, field margins, old earthworks, and sites already set apart from the ordinary landscape.

The enclosure here measures roughly 13.4 metres north to south and 11.2 metres east to west, bounded by an earthen bank standing about 0.8 metres on the interior side and 0.75 metres on the exterior. A local road runs along the outer base of the bank on the northwest side, which means the site has long been a recognised feature of the landscape, something people passed and knew about, even if it rarely appeared on any formal record. The ground inside slopes gently downward following the natural lie of the hill, and the surface is uneven beneath the grass, with loose stones scattered across the interior and bushes thickening along the margins. According to local information gathered by surveyor Denis Power, the site was used specifically for the burial of unbaptised children. It was documented and uploaded to the archaeological record in August 2011.

The site sits in working pasture, so access depends on the goodwill of the landowner and the practical realities of a working farm. The earthen bank is the clearest thing to orient yourself by, and its roughly circular form distinguishes it from ordinary field boundaries. The interior, undulating and stone-scattered under grass, gives little away visually, which is part of what makes these places so quietly affecting. There are no markers, no inscriptions, and no apparent formal opening through the bank, just the enclosure itself, holding what it holds.

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Abbeyfeale, Co. Limerick
52.36748271,-9.31144478

Ref: LI04451

Nearby Places

Graveyard, Abbeyfeale, Co. Limerick
Church, Abbeyfeale, Co. Limerick
Children's burial ground, Abbeyfeale, Co. Limerick

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