What sets it apart is its purpose: it is a children's burial ground, a cillín, the kind of informal, unconsecrated space where unbaptised infants and young children were quietly interred for centuries across rural Ireland. Plain upright grave-markers, aligned north to south, are still visible on the raised ground, which measures roughly 21 metres long and 14 metres wide, rising about a metre above the surrounding field. A hay shed now borders it to the north-east, a detail that captures the way these places persisted in the working landscape, neither formalised nor entirely forgotten.

Cilliní occupy a peculiar and often overlooked corner of Irish religious and social history. Because the Catholic Church historically denied full burial rites to unbaptised children, families turned to marginal or liminal ground, places at townland boundaries, beside old ringforts, or along the shore. Aghafadda fits that pattern precisely, positioned at the edge of its townland rather than at its centre. What makes this site particularly striking is the recency of its use: local tradition holds that children were buried here up to forty years before the record was compiled, meaning the practice continued well into the latter half of the twentieth century, long after it might be assumed to have faded.