The remains of unbaptized children are to be exhumed from an unconsecrated burial ground which lies on the route of a E95 million new roadway in Co Mayo. Archaeologists are already at work excavating the children's graveyard - which lies on a curve of the River Moy between Ballina and Foxford. The overgrown cemetery, which was used as a last resting place for stillborn babies from the 17th to the 20th centuries, posed a serious dilemma for planners of the new N26 roadway, which will link Ballina with the N5 at Bohola.

The plot lies directly on the route deemed most suitable for the thoroughfare, which will incorporate a bypass of a present-day bottleneck, the town of Foxford.

Now, months before the bulldozers, graders and excavators are due to move in, a 15-member team of archaeologists has begun meticulously examining the burial ground. Each body will be carefully exhumed and reinterred in Ballinahaglish Cemetery, Knockmore. Knockmore parish will pay the cost of reburying the remains and erecting a monument, according to the parish priest, Father Michael Harrison.

Father Harrison, who recently celebrated a special Mass for the infants who died prematurely in the period from the 1700s to the early 1900s, expressed satisfaction over the weekend at the sensitive manner in which Mayo County Council was dealing with the situation.

"There has been full consultation with the local people and I am extremely satisfied with the manner in which this matter has been dealt with and the fact that these deceased children are at last to get a Christian burial," Father Harrison continued.

A team of archaeologists, under site director Ms Johanna Nolan, began excavations at Toneybane about a month ago.

It is still difficult to estimate the number of burials due to an abundance of old tree stumps and undergrowth. The graves are aligned east to west. Most of the graves have head and foot stones to act as markers.

According to Mr Gerry Walsh, senior archaeologist with Mayo County Council, about 10 graves have been uncovered so far. Local folklore has it that the last remains were placed there about 76 years ago.

Mayo County Council is unique among local authorities in that it operates a topsoil removal programme before major infrastructural works, such as new roads or sewerage schemes, are initiated.

Stone artifacts have been discovered from the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age, including an arrowhead, a stone axe and stone scrapers, used for such tasks as scraping the bark from trees.

In trenches close to the burial ground, the archaeologists discovered a series of hand-dug furrows believed to be possibly 5,000 years old. More recent is a network of lazy beds (potato tillage), a remnant from the days when Ballina had a starch factory and potatoes were grown extensively. "Some of the older local people tell us that a few generations ago these fields were all potatoes," Ms Nolan said.

http://editorial.yellowbrix.com/editorial/editstory.nsp?step=5&story_id=38969119