‘Chamber of horrors’ being exhumed at Ireland mass baby grave

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 up to nearly 800 infants and young children — some of it in a defunct septic tank — is being excavated on the grounds of the former home 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 left at the mercy of a cruel system.

The grave was accidentally discovered by two boys a half century ago. But 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