‘Children’s Burial Ground’

‘Children’s burial grounds’ are fairly common archaeological monuments on the Irish landscape. They are un-consecrated places used primarily, though not exclusively, for the burial of unbaptised children. Chiefly because the Roman Catholic Church did not approve of the burial of unbaptised children in consecrated ground, alternative burial places were provided for such children. This custom started in the Early Christian Period, when pre-Christian burial plots were used for this purpose. In Ireland, it was a common practice well in to the twentieth century until the Second Vatican Council, 1962-1965. Although some adults, famine victims and young people were buried in such grounds, they were chiefly used for unbaptised children. There was a widely held belief that unbaptised children went to limbo, an indeterminate place. Numerous such burial places are recorded on the Ordnance Survey maps, especially in the west of Ireland. They are often located near abandoned early ecclesiastical sites, ringforts, cross-roads, townland boundaries, or outside graveyard walls. Children’s burial grounds are known throughout Ireland by a variety of Irish names, such a as a cillin (anglicised as killeen), lios/lisheen, reilig/reilicin.

A ‘children’s burial ground’ consists of a small burial area, sometimes delimited by an enclosing low bank of earth or stone, and usually containing grave-markers .The enclosures are circular, or rectangular, or sometimes irregular in outline, and some sites are not enclosed. Grave markers are generally small, rough, uninscribed stones, left or erected on the graves, and are sometimes arranged in rows, generally aligned north-south. ‘Children’s burial grounds’ in Ireland are a sad reminder of belief and practice in the not too distant past.

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