Children's burial ground, Corraneena, Co. Galway

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Burial Grounds

Children’s burial ground, Corraneena, Co. Galway

On a west-facing slope in Corraneena, a small patch of grassland holds a cluster of moss-covered rectangular stones set into the ground, unmarked by any enclosing wall or formal boundary.

Locals know it as a CBG, shorthand for a children's burial ground, and the abbreviation itself speaks to how common, and how quietly accepted, these sites once were across rural Ireland.

Children's burial grounds, also known as cillíní, were used for centuries to inter unbaptised infants who, under the rules of the Catholic Church, could not be buried in consecrated ground. They occupy a liminal space in Irish religious and social life, typically sited at old boundaries, on slopes, or near ancient enclosures, places that were neither fully sacred nor entirely secular. The Corraneena site is unenclosed, measuring roughly 12.9 metres on a northeast to southwest axis and 2.5 metres east to west, a modest footprint for a place that would have absorbed considerable private grief over generations. A handful of set stones survive, rectangular in form and blanketed in moss. The eastern edge of the site appears to have been disturbed or partially removed during the construction of a road and field wall, meaning the ground that remains is likely less than what once existed.

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