These grounds, known in Irish as cillíní (singular cillín), were used for centuries to inter unbaptised infants and occasionally others considered ineligible for consecrated Catholic burial, including stillborn children, the unbaptised, and sometimes suicides or strangers. They occupy a peculiar position in the Irish landscape, neither fully sacred nor entirely secular, and they tend to survive as low, unmarked enclosures in field corners, on townland boundaries, or beside the ruins of early ecclesiastical sites.

The practice of burying unbaptised children outside consecrated ground was rooted in the theological position, long maintained by the Catholic Church, that those who died without baptism could not enter heaven and therefore could not share ground with the baptised dead. For rural families this created a profound and largely private grief. The infant would be buried quietly, often at night, in a place that was nonetheless understood locally as set apart and in some sense protected. Many cillíní are associated with pre-Norman or early Christian enclosures, suggesting that communities chose sites already understood to carry a certain sanctity, even if that sanctity operated outside official church sanction. The specific history of the Coologory site, including when it was last used and what form it takes on the ground, is not currently available in published records.