Killaghaunnapasty, Callow, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Burial Grounds
On a low natural rise in the farmland south of Callow Lough, a scattering of limestone boulders marks out rows of graves that most passers-by would take for a rough, unremarkable field.
What lies here is a cillin burial ground, sometimes also called a cillín or children's burial ground (CBG), a category of site found across Ireland where, historically, unbaptised infants and others excluded from consecrated ground were interred quietly, outside the formal structures of parish life. The place has no dramatic ruin, no tower, no legible inscription. Its significance is almost entirely in the arrangement of the stones.
The site measures roughly 18 metres long by 14 metres wide, slightly elevated above the surrounding field surface, with the limestone boulders inside aligned in rows oriented north to south, indicating individual graves. Fragments of a low enclosing wall survive along the northern and eastern sides, though much of the perimeter has worn away. The first edition Ordnance Survey six-inch map, produced in the mid-nineteenth century, recorded a roughly circular enclosure of around 20 metres diameter surrounding the area, but no surface trace of that outer boundary remains today. The name Killaghaunnapasty itself carries echoes of the Irish word for a small church or ecclesiastical enclosure, suggesting the site may have a longer devotional history than its current condition implies.