Children's Burial Ground

Children’s Burial Ground, Cloonygowan, Co. Mayo: a small rectangular enclosure, roughly 16 by 23 metres, where unbaptised infants were laid to rest because church teaching barred them from consecrated ground. Plain stones mark the plots, some graves crowned with quartz in old Irish belief, and a possible church ruin with a bullaun stone stands nearby. Today trees and loose stones obscure much of it, while a farm shed and fence press close, as if the countryside had nearly swallowed the children back into itself.