Excavation begins to find remains of 796 children at secret mass grave in Ireland

A century after Irish nuns first began to bury hundreds of infants in what would become a mass, unmarked grave, archaeologists and other specialists will today start excavating the site in Tuam, County Galway.

- Rory Carroll

A mechanical digger is to slowly start scraping earth at the 5,000-sq-metre site where the Bon Secours order is believed to have interred 796 infants who died at the St Mary's mother and baby home between 1925 and 1961.

The operation, which is expected to last two years, marks a new stage in Ireland's reckoning with the abuse and neglect of children in religious and state-run institutions, especially those who bore the stigma of being born out of wedlock. Their treatment has been called a stain on the nation's conscience. At St Mary's in Tuam, a so-called mother and baby home where young women and girls were sent to give birth, some infants were buried in a disused subterranean septic tank.

There were no burial records and the deaths were ignored until a decade ago when Catherine Corless, a local historian, uncovered death certificates for 796 infants.

This led to a judicial commission, a state apology and a promise to excavate the site.