These sites, known in Irish as cillíní, were the designated resting places for unbaptised infants and others considered ineligible for the parish churchyard. They appear across Ireland in their hundreds, often going unremarked, occupying marginal or liminal ground such as old ringfort interiors, cliff edges, or, as here, a gentle rise above the surrounding fields.

The burial ground at Killaghaun sits on that slight elevation, its rectangular outline measuring roughly nineteen metres in length and fourteen and a half metres in width. The boundary is not a wall but a scarp, a low earthen edge where the ground drops away, defining the space without enclosing it in any formal architectural sense. Inside, numerous set stones mark individual graves, each oriented on an east-west axis, a convention with deep roots in Christian burial practice, the body laid with the head to the west and feet to the east, facing the direction of the rising sun and, symbolically, the resurrection. The stones themselves are not inscribed headstones in the familiar sense; they are simple markers, uncut or minimally worked, placed to record a presence rather than to announce a name.