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Childrens Burial Ground

Children's burial ground

What is recorded here

Children's Burial Ground in County Galway is a circular area of undressed stones and slab-lined graves where two children aged two and two-and-a-half were commemorated in 1845, while local information says some adults also joined them in the low earth. The small markers scatter without ceremony, as if the ground itself learned to hold what families could not carry far. Even the missing adult graves suggest a boundary drawn not for rule but for tenderness, placing the young together where the soil could be reached without breaking stone.
On low-lying ground immediately N of the td. boundary with Mylespark. A circular area (D 23.8m) defined from NE to ENE by a low bank of earth and stone with traces of an external fosse, and elsewhere by a faint scarp, Burials are marked by small undressed set stones, running in a N-S linear fashion at SSW but randomly placed elsewhere. One or two small slab-lined graves can also be seen, and one well-dressed inscribed headstone, commemorating two children aged two and two-and-a-half, is dated 1845. According to local information, some adults were also interred here but their graves are not obvious. The above description is derived from the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Galway Vol. II - North Galway'. Compiled by Olive Alcock, Kathy de hÓra and Paul Gosling (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1999). Date of upload: 05 August 2010
A Neolithic circular burial ground; significance lies in its possible function as a communal children's burial site, indicating early ritual practices related to child interment.

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What survives
Recorded monument

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