Children's burial ground, Ardane, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Burial Grounds
In a small wooded hollow in the Glen of Aherlow, at the foot of the Galty mountains, lies a burial ground that was never meant for the baptised.
Small upright stones mark the graves of unbaptised infants in what was once a practice common across Ireland, whereby children who died before receiving the sacrament were buried not in consecrated churchyards but in liminal places, often ancient enclosures, cave mouths, or sites associated with pre-Christian sanctity. This particular site carries a local name, the Kyle, and a quiet gravity that sets it apart from the surrounding marsh and rough meadow.
The oval enclosure, measuring roughly 35 metres across its longer axis, is defined by an earth and stone bank known locally as the Kyle. It is associated with St. Berichter, a Saxon saint who came to Ireland in the late seventh century and founded the monastery at Tullylease in Co. Cork. A holy well dedicated to him lies about 170 metres to the south-east, and his pattern day, the 18th of February, was marked by prayers said at both the Kyle and the well. A church once stood within the enclosure, though when the Office of Public Works carried out work here in the 1940s, no trace of walls or foundations was found; the stone had to be imported to build the small protective enclosure erected in 1946 to shelter a collection of cross-slabs from cattle damage. That structure, a crude mortared oval in the south of the enclosure, is reached by a stile in the west quadrant whose outer steps have partly collapsed, incorporating a reused stone with a deliberate groove cut into it.
The cross-slabs housed inside the modern enclosure are the most immediately visible focus for a visitor, but it is the small stones standing in the interior of the Kyle itself, marking infant graves, that give the place its particular character. The site sits within a wooded area and is surrounded by rough ground, which keeps it somewhat apart from the more travelled parts of the Glen of Aherlow.