These sites, known in Irish tradition as cilliní (the singular is cillín), were used for centuries to inter unbaptised infants and others who, under Catholic doctrine, could not be buried in hallowed ground. They occupy a particular kind of quiet in the Irish landscape, neither fully acknowledged nor entirely forgotten, often tucked into the margins of fields, beside old ringforts, or at townland boundaries.

The practice of burying unbaptised children separately from the main community had its roots in theological doctrine around limbo, a state held to exist between heaven and hell, where souls who had died without baptism were thought to reside. Because these children had not received the sacrament, the Church for a long period refused them burial in consecrated cemeteries. Families, unwilling to leave their infants without any rite of passage, found their own solutions, returning again and again to the same quietly designated spots. The result, across Ireland, is a scattered geography of small, often unmarked burial grounds, many of them situated on or near ancient monuments, as if older sacred associations in the land were being quietly borrowed. The site at Farmhill is one such place, recorded as a monument in its own right, though detailed documentation specific to it remains limited at present.