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Running the length of the unmarked grave plot in the former mother and baby home in Castlepollard County Westmeath is a wall 4 meters high and 40 wide. This wall has old, rusted, handmade nails hammered into it at various points with no regular pattern. Local folk memory is that these were placed by the men charged with burying the babies in unmarked graves in white shoeboxes as an act of marking each burial between the 1930s and 1960s.  The nails have become a symbol to the survivor Community to  attempt to explore and process the complexed experience of being born in this institution. Below are some images of my exploration of the symbolism of these nails through the process of making.

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Below is a  link  from RTE, giving more background to the folk memory of the story of nails

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https://www.rte.ie/news/special-reports/2014/0610/622940-mother-and-baby-homes/