Children's burial ground

The National Monuments Service's description

Located at a ringfort (SL005-040----).
According to local information, burials of unbaptized babies took place in the space intervening between the E side of the rath and the concentric outer bank. The space (7m N-S; 15m E-W) is bounded on the N side by the E-W field wall which crosses the rath and on the S by a low ruined E-W wall (Wth 1m; H 0.3m) that extends between the rath and the outer bank. Short lengths of low ruined walls subdivide the space. The area is grass-covered; with low, moss-covered stones protrude randomly from the grass. No formal grave plots can be discerned. A single upright stone (H 0.53; Wth 0.3m; T 0.18m) stands at the E edge of the space. Three slabs, which may originally have stood upright, lie prostrate at the base of a sycamore tree which is growing on the line of the E-W wall on the S side of the space.
It is possible that burials also took place in the rath interior, but there is no direct evidence.
The burial ground is named ‘Cill Rouderaun’ in one of two accounts which are preserved in the National Folklore Schools Collection (1937-39) (https://www.duchas.ie/):

Volume 0155, p. 001: "… an old graveyard called Cill Rouderaun. About a quarter of a mile from the village of Grange, on the south side of the road leading from Grange to Ballintrillick, Cill Roudeaun is situated Around the ‘reilig’ is the remains of an old stone wall. People say that unbaptised children were buried there long ago: but it has not been used as a burial place within the memory of the oldest inhabitant. About 200 yards north of the ‘reilig’ is a holy well called ‘Tobar Pádruig’"

Volume 0155, p. 236-7: "There is an old disused graveyard in the townland of Ardnaglass near Grange, Co Sligo … This graveyard was used only as a burial place for unbaptised children about eighty years ago. There is a large fairy fort in this field and it is said that the children's graves are in and around the fort. There was a flax mill in this field and every morning when the workmen went to work in it they used to see the tracks of little feet in the mill. They thought these were made by the children who had been buried in the fort."

Attached images:
SL005-040001-_01 viewed from E
SL005-040001-_02 viewed from W

Notified to NMS by Tamlyn McHugh

Compiled by: Jane O’Shaughnessy

Date of upload: 5 February 2021