Burial ground for children, Leamaneh, Co. Clare

Co. Clare |

Burial Grounds

Burial ground for children, Leamaneh, Co. Clare

On a low saddle of ground in the Leamaneh valley in County Clare, a shallow D-shaped mound sits at the eastern edge of a col, its flat western side giving way to a surface covered in small stones arranged in neat east-to-west rows.

The mound is modest in scale, roughly seventeen metres across and no more than half a metre in height, but what it represents is quietly arresting. This is a cillín, a place where unbaptised children were traditionally buried apart from consecrated ground. Catholic doctrine once held that infants who died without baptism could not be interred in parish churchyards, and so communities across Ireland created their own burial places in liminal spots: field boundaries, old ringforts, the edges of bogs, and passes between hills. The Leamaneh site fits that pattern precisely, occupying a threshold between higher ground and the sloping basin that opens out to the east and south.

The site appears on Ordnance Survey six-inch maps from as early as 1840, where it is marked plainly as Children's Burial Ground, a designation repeated on the 1916 edition as well. That consistency across nearly a century of mapping suggests the site was well known and clearly understood by local communities throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. The mound itself preserves its stones most clearly at the western end, where the rows remain roughly a metre apart. The largest upright stones, some reaching about half a metre in height and placed approximately eighty-five centimetres from one another, may mark individual graves, though the site has not been formally excavated. The D-shape of the mound, with its straight western edge, is an unusual feature and may reflect the natural topography of the col or some deliberate effort to define the boundary of the burial area.

Rated 0 out of 5

Visitor Notes

Review type for post source and places source type not found
Added by
Picture of Pete F
Pete F
IrishHistory.com is passionate about helping people discover and connect with the rich stories of their local communities.
Please use the form below to submit any photos you may have of Burial ground for children, Leamaneh, Co. Clare. We're happy to take any suggested edits you may have too. Please be advised it will take us some time to get to these submissions. Thank you.
Name
Email
Message
Upload images/documents
Maximum file size: 50 MB
If you'd like to add an image or a PDF please do it here.

Advertisement