Shanclogh, Garrafine, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Burial Grounds
In a west-facing field in County Galway, a small patch of ground rises almost imperceptibly above the surrounding grassland.
It measures roughly eleven metres by ten, its northern edge defined by a modern field wall, and within its boundaries a scattering of small stones marks the positions of graves aligned east to west in the manner common to Christian burial. What makes it quietly arresting is the absence of any formal enclosure, any church ruin, any obvious indication to a passing eye that the ground is sacred. This is a cillin, a type of informal or unconsecrated burial ground, sometimes called a cillín or children's burial ground, where those excluded from formal churchyard burial, most often unbaptised infants but sometimes others on the margins of ecclesiastical practice, were interred outside the boundaries of consecrated land.
Standing in the south-eastern quadrant of the site is a small slab with a cross inscription and the initials PK. The identity of PK is not recorded, though the personalised marker among otherwise anonymous small stones suggests at least one burial here was commemorated with something approaching a formal monument. The site lies adjacent to a castle, which lends it a particular historical density; the two features sit close together on the same slope, one a structure of power and defence, the other a quiet margin where the unnamed and the unrecorded were placed in the earth. O'Flanagan noted the site as early as 1927, placing it within a documented landscape of medieval and post-medieval Galway that included both the castle and this unprepossessing ground beside it.
The site sits approximately one hundred metres west of the townland boundary in Garrafine, in open grassland. The graves are not formally marked beyond those small set stones, and the cross-inscribed slab is the only upright feature of any prominence. Visitors to the area who know to look for it will find little to announce it, which is in keeping with the nature of such places.