Children's burial ground, Caherdaniel, Co. Kerry

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Burial Grounds

Children’s burial ground, Caherdaniel, Co. Kerry

Near Caherdaniel on the Iveragh Peninsula, a small triangular enclosure overlooks Darrynane Bay with a view that seems entirely at odds with its purpose.

Known as Calluragh Burial Ground, this was a cillín, the Irish term for an informal burial place set aside for unbaptised infants, children excluded by Church law from consecrated ground. Such sites are found across Ireland, often tucked against field boundaries or old earthworks, and they carry a particular kind of quiet weight. This one was still receiving burials of unbaptised children as late as the nineteenth century.

The enclosure measures roughly 23 metres north to south and just under 22 metres east to west internally, enclosed by a drystone wall that has not fared well against time. At its best preserved point along the northern edge, the wall retains its original construction clearly enough: block-like slabs set as inner and outer facings around a rubble core, averaging about 1.35 metres wide, though standing now to only one or two courses in height. Elsewhere the boundary has been largely absorbed into later field walling, making it difficult to read as a separate or deliberate structure. The interior is heavily overgrown and scattered with loose stone and boulders. A number of low upright slabs are arranged in rough north to south rows, as grave markers sometimes were, though the majority appear to have no particular order, shifted over the years by vegetation, weather, or the simple passage of time.

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