These grounds are known in Irish as cillíní, singular cillín, and they served for centuries as the burial places of unbaptised infants, who were excluded by Catholic Church doctrine from consecrated ground. The theology behind this exclusion rested on the concept of limbo, a state neither heaven nor hell, and the practical consequence was that grieving families buried their children at the margins, in lonely or liminal spots: old ringforts, the edges of fields, ancient ecclesiastical enclosures, and shorelines. The sorrow attached to these places is compounded by the secrecy that often surrounded them; burials were frequently carried out at night, without ceremony, by parents who had no other recourse.

Cillíní as a class of monument are now recognised as archaeologically and socially significant, representing a largely underdocumented aspect of Irish rural life that persisted well into the twentieth century. The site at Annagh is one of many such grounds recorded across Clare, a county where the tradition was observed in both inland and coastal parishes. The Church's formal teaching on limbo was quietly set aside by the Vatican in 2007, but the physical remains of these burial grounds predate that change by generations, and the grief they represent does not dissolve with doctrinal revision.