Only one stone wall remains of the old mother and baby home in this town, but it has cast a shadow over all of Ireland. A mass grave that could hold nearly 800 infants and young children—some of it in a defunct septic tank—is being excavated on the grounds of the former home, which was run by the Bon Secours Sisters, an order of nuns.

The burial site has forced Ireland and the Catholic Church, long central to its identity, to reckon with a legacy of having shunned unmarried mothers and separated them from their children, who were left at the mercy of a cruel system.

The grave was accidentally discovered by two boys a half-century ago. However, the true horror of the place was not known until a local historian began digging into the home`s history. Catherine Corless revealed that the site was atop a septic tank and that 796 deceased infants were unaccounted for. Her findings caused a scandal when the international news media wrote about her work in 2014.