What is recorded here

Lisheennagaurlagh is a children's burial ground in County Galway where well-fashioned stones marked small graves beside a possible chapel. The last child was laid to rest there in the late 1930s, but dense blackthorn and briar soon swallowed the site, hiding the aligned markers from human eyes. The garden does not belong to people anymore; it has become a feral chamber where the dead stop being remembered and begin dreaming instead.

Associated with a possible chapel (GA104-092003-). McCaffrey (1952, 222, no. 6) recorded this children's burial ground, which consisted of a number of graves (six to the S and five to the W of the church based on his site plan) marked by head- and foot-stones. The stones were ‘well fashioned' and were probably taken from the church. On the initial inspection in February 1983, a small roughly subcircular, but unenclosed, concentration of grave-markers was noted. The headstones were small (H 0.3m) and were aligned E-W. On re-inspection in June 1992, the site was completely overgrown with dense blackthorn and briar growth and was impenetrable. According local information gleaned by McCaffrey (ibid.), the last internment took place in the late 1930s. Compiled by: Galway Archaeological Survey, UCG Date of upload: 29 August 2019

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