These were informal, unconsecrated plots used for centuries to inter unbaptised infants, and occasionally others considered ineligible for burial in sanctified ground, including stillborn children, young mothers who died in childbirth, and sometimes strangers whose origins were unknown. The practice was widespread across Ireland and persisted well into the twentieth century, driven by the belief that those who died without baptism could not enter consecrated ground. As a result, these sites tend to occupy marginal spaces, old ringfort interiors, field boundaries, or ancient ecclesiastical enclosures whose pre-Christian associations made them feel set apart from ordinary land without being formally blessed by the Church.

The name Kilconnell suggests an early ecclesiastical foundation, with the element "kill" deriving from the Latin "cella" by way of Old Irish, indicating a cell or small church associated with a saint or early monastic figure. The Connell element likely refers to a personal name, possibly that of a local saint or founder now largely forgotten. Such sites frequently accumulated layers of use over many centuries, with early medieval religious activity giving way to informal burial customs as the institutional Church consolidated its control over official graveyards. Children's burial grounds of this kind are found throughout Clare and the wider west of Ireland, often located within or immediately adjacent to the remains of earlier enclosures, and they remain quietly significant to local communities even where formal memory of their use has faded.