These were informal, unconsecrated burial places used for centuries to inter unbaptised infants, stillborn children, and others who, under Catholic Church law, could not be buried in consecrated ground. The practice was widespread across Ireland, and the sites tend to be quiet, marginal spaces, set apart from the main churchyard, often marked by little more than a thickening of grass or a low mound.

The Rushestown example sits in level grassland, its subcircular outline measuring roughly nineteen metres northwest to southeast and eleven and a half metres northeast to southwest. A thick hedge curves around it from the south-southeast through west to north, giving the enclosure a sheltered, slightly enclosed quality. Of whatever markers once stood here, only two survive: a single limestone upright and one recumbent stone laid flat. The limestone, a common building and monument material across the Galway landscape, weathers slowly, which perhaps explains why even these two pieces have endured while others have not.