The circular earthwork enclosure, a type of defended farmstead built in early medieval Ireland, was at some point repurposed as a children's burial ground, known in Irish as a cillín. These informal graveyards, typically sited at the margins of consecrated land, were used for centuries to bury unbaptised infants and others who, under Catholic practice, could not be interred in a parish churchyard. The particular choice of a ringfort for this purpose was not unusual; such ancient enclosures carried an aura of otherworldliness in local tradition, and communities often regarded them as appropriate liminal spaces for those who existed between the recognised categories of the living and the dead.

The site's dual identity, both as a prehistoric monument and a place of informal burial, was recorded by Killanin and Duignan in their 1967 work on Irish heritage, and the practice has also been preserved in local memory. What makes the Ballinphuil site particularly striking now is its near-total invisibility. No visible surface trace survives of the burials, and the ringfort itself leaves little obvious impression on the landscape. Children interred here left no markers, no inscriptions, and no formal record, which was entirely in keeping with the quiet, unofficial nature of cillín burial across Ireland. The grief of families who used these places was real, but the act of burial was deliberate and discreet, shaped by theological exclusion and social convention rather than indifference.