Children's burial grounds

A cillín (plural cillíní) is a historic burial ground used mainly for unbaptised and stillborn children, who in some regions were not allowed burial in consecrated Catholic graveyards. Others who could not be buried there were sometimes laid in them too: strangers, the shipwrecked dead, famine victims, people who died by suicide, and others.

When. It is not known when separate burial grounds began in Ireland. The earliest historical reference is from 1619, and the sixteen cillíní excavated between 1966 and 2004 dated from the mid-1500s to the mid-1800s. One theory links them to stricter Church rules on unbaptised infants after the Counter-Reformation, with use continuing until the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.

Where. Cillíní were often placed in old church sites, abandoned graveyards and ringforts, and at townland boundaries, crossroads and shores. Graves were often outlined with small stones, and white quartz pebbles were sometimes placed on them; the evidence suggests the burials were made with care.

Today. Many sites were cleared for farmland in the 19th century, and others were forgotten as people moved away. Cillíní are now recognised as a class of archaeological monument. In some places the remains have been moved to consecrated churchyards; other sites have been blessed where they are. At Cushendun, County Antrim, in August 2014, the parish held a ceremony for the reburial of nineteen children whose remains were found during an excavation at Castle Carra. (All from Wikipedia, "Cillín" ↗, which cites the archaeological literature.)

Children's burial ground records in the Republic, by county. Wikipedia gives 1,693 cillíní on the island as of 2021, with Galway (480), Kerry (260), Mayo (224), Cork (198) and Clare (150) the highest. The record used here comes close for Galway, Kerry, Mayo and Clare. Cork is the exception: only 34 Cork records are in the "Children's burial ground" class. We have not established why; some Cork sites may be recorded under another class, such as "Burial ground", which is not included here.

Open a county for every record: townland, a line quoted from the survey's own description where it has one, the SMR number (linked to the Historic Environment Viewer) and a map link where the record has a position.

• A record is a survey entry, not a promise that something is there. The Sites and Monuments Record lists sites that are known, reported or marked on old maps, including some that have been destroyed, moved, or were never found when inspected. Each record's own description says what the surveyors saw; read it before you set out.
• Some records have no description uploaded yet, and a few have no usable position; they are marked as such.
• Most sites are on private land. Ask before you cross a field, and leave things as you find them: monuments in the Record of Monuments and Places are protected under section 12 of the National Monuments (Amendment) Act 1994 ↗.
• The Sites and Monuments Record covers the Republic only. Northern Ireland's record (the NISMR) is counted here by county from its open data, by matching the record descriptions; it is not listed site by site and its counts are not directly comparable.
• Only the record's class, townland and position are given here, with a link to the full record. The surveyors' descriptions are on the Historic Environment Viewer.
• Not every cillín is on the record, and some recorded ones have no visible trace left. Old maps, local histories and the memories of older people have kept the locations of many (Wikipedia, "Cillín").

Source: National Monuments Service, Archaeological Survey of Ireland, Sites and Monuments Record, open data via data.gov.ie ↗ (CC BY 4.0); every record links to the Historic Environment Viewer ↗. Northern Ireland: Northern Ireland Sites and Monuments Record (Department for Communities, Historic Environment Division), OpenDataNI ↗.