Children's burial ground, Mullaghmore, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Burial Grounds
In a hollow set into level farmland near Mullaghmore in County Galway, a small rectangular patch of ground holds a quiet and melancholy distinction.
It is a cillín, the Irish term for an unconsecrated burial ground used historically for unbaptised infants, and sometimes for others considered ineligible for burial in sanctified earth. These sites are found across Ireland in their hundreds, tucked into marginal land, liminal places at field edges or boundaries, and the one at Mullaghmore follows that pattern precisely, sitting in a natural depression as though deliberately set apart from the surrounding agricultural landscape.
The site measures roughly thirteen metres north to south and nine and a half metres east to west, its boundary marked by a low bank of earth and stone along the northern and southern sides, with a natural scarp defining the edges elsewhere. Within that modest enclosure, a number of small set stones are still visible, indicating individual graves oriented roughly northwest to southeast. The preservation is poor, as is the case with many cillíní, which were rarely maintained and often only survive as faint impressions in the land. Claffey recorded the site in 1983, by which point it was already in a degraded condition, the earth and stone bank subsided, the grave markers unassuming to a degree that makes the whole enclosure easy to overlook entirely.