Burial ground, Cloondrinagh, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Burial Grounds
In the townland of Cloondrinagh, in County Clare, there is a burial ground old enough to have been formally recorded as an archaeological monument, yet quiet enough that almost nothing about it has made it into wider circulation.
It sits in that particular category of Irish site, the kind that appears on maps and in monument registers without much further explanation, its presence acknowledged but its story largely untold.
Cloondrinagh is a small rural townland in Clare, a county whose landscape is threaded with early Christian enclosures, medieval graveyards, and pre-Christian burial sites of many kinds. Without more specific detail available, it is not possible to say with certainty whether this particular ground is associated with a lost church, a cillin, which is a term for an informal burial place historically used for unbaptised infants, or some earlier tradition altogether. What can be said is that the formal recognition of a site as a burial ground monument typically indicates either visible physical remains, a sustained local memory of burial activity, or both. In Clare, such places often carry long histories of use that long pre-date any surviving markers or enclosures.