Children's burial ground, Killomeerhoe, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Burial Grounds

Children’s burial ground, Killomeerhoe, Co. Kerry

In a patch of poor pastureland in north Kerry, a small semicircular mound is all that visibly remains of a place where unbaptised children were once quietly buried.

These sites, known in Irish tradition as cillíní, were informal burial grounds set apart from consecrated churchyards, used for infants who died before baptism and were therefore excluded, under older Catholic doctrine, from regular parish burial. The one at Killomeerhoe is unassuming to the point of near-invisibility, its original circular form now cut through by a field boundary and largely levelled by time and agricultural use.

The 1841 to 1842 Ordnance Survey maps record it plainly as a "Childrens Burial Ground", and the first edition mapping shows what would have been a complete circular enclosure before a north-south fieldbank divided it in two. What remains on the western side of that bank measures roughly eight metres by eight and a half metres internally, with a second, smaller earthen mound, approximately two metres by three metres, also visible nearby. A considerable scatter of stones can still be seen across the area. The landowner, Mr Kissane, reported that a small stone-lined grave was uncovered in the northern sector of the enclosure at some point, though it held no skeletal remains when found, and no trace of it is visible at the surface today. The absence of remains is not unusual given the acidity of Kerry soils, which can dissolve bone entirely over centuries.

The site sits low and unannounced in its landscape, offering little to the casual eye beyond that modest curve of earthwork and the loose stones half-hidden in the grass. Its interest lies less in what survives than in what it represents: a quiet, persistent tradition of finding a place, however marginal, for children who fell outside the boundaries drawn by official religion.

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