A rath is a circular earthwork enclosure, typically dating from the early medieval period and built as a farmstead or place of protection, and thousands of them survive across the Irish countryside. This one, however, was put to a later and more sorrowful use: the landowner records that its interior served as a burial ground for children.

The practice of burying unbaptised children, or infants who died before or shortly after birth, in liminal places outside consecrated ground was widespread in Ireland for centuries, shaped by Catholic doctrine that denied such children a formal church burial. Raths, ancient earthworks already set apart from the ordinary landscape, were frequently chosen for this purpose, as were boundaries, shorelines, and the ruins of early Christian sites. These informal cemeteries are known in Irish as cilliní, and they appear in almost every county, often unrecorded except in local memory. In Barleymount Middle, that memory survives through the landowner's account alone. There are no visible graves, no markers, no inscriptions. The ground keeps whatever it holds entirely to itself.