Lisgauran Children's Burial Ground, Cloonnaglasha, Co. Galway

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Burial Grounds

Lisgauran Children’s Burial Ground, Cloonnaglasha, Co. Galway

On the north bank of a small stream in the rolling pastureland of County Galway, a roughly square patch of ground measuring less than ten metres across holds a few quiet rows of shapeless stones.

No wall encloses it, no marker announces it. The stones are set into the earth in north-to-south rows, each grave oriented east-west in the old Christian manner, and they mark the resting place of children.

This is a cillín, the Irish term for an unconsecrated burial ground used historically for unbaptised infants, and occasionally for others excluded from consecrated ground. Such sites are found across Ireland, often in marginal or liminal spots, at field edges, near streams, or on old boundaries. The name here, recorded in the Ordnance Survey Letters as Lios gárán or Lissgauraun, suggests an older layer of meaning, lios being a Gaelic term for an enclosure or fort, though any original enclosure has long since vanished. The site appears on the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps as a small, roughly rectangular area, and John O'Flanagan's 1927 compilation of the OS Letters records it plainly as a burying place for children. A holy well is associated with the site nearby, a pairing that is not unusual in the Irish landscape, where the sacred and the sorrowful tend to find one another. According to local information, the last burial here took place in 1945, which means this ground was in use within living memory of people who may still be alive today.

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