This is a cillín, a type of unofficial burial ground found across Ireland where unbaptised infants and children who could not receive a formal Catholic burial were interred, usually in marginal or liminal places, away from consecrated ground. The ground at Gortbrack is one such place, set apart both physically and, for a long time, in memory.

The Ordnance Survey Name Books, compiled in the nineteenth century as part of Ireland's first systematic mapping project, recorded this site plainly as "a burial place for children only," and noted that it was already falling out of use by that period. What remains is a rectangular platform measuring roughly 8.6 metres north to south and 17.2 metres east to west. Across its surface, upright slabs average about half a metre in height and are arranged in north-south rows, densely packed and entirely without inscription. No names, no dates, no epitaphs. Scattered among them are small cairns of stone, some of which include pieces of quartz, a material with deep and persistent associations with burial and the otherworld in Irish tradition, found at prehistoric tombs and grave sites across the country.