What remains at Kilmeadan, on the western bank of the River Suir in County Waterford, is the kind of ruin that accumulates layers quietly. A castle once stood here overlooking the river, part of a roughly rectangular enclosure stretching some two hundred metres that still contains earthworks associated with the original stronghold and a later house. The Suir runs close by, only about fifteen metres to the east, and the whole arrangement suggests a site chosen as much for surveillance of the river as for anything else.

The castle was a le Poer foundation, held by John Power of Dunhill as recently as 1640, when the manor of Kilmeaden was recorded in his possession. The le Poers, one of the great Anglo-Norman dynasties of Munster, had deep roots in this part of Waterford, and the castle would have been a significant local seat. That tenure ended abruptly around 1650, when Cromwellian forces captured and destroyed it during the campaign that swept through the province. After the Restoration, the lands passed to the Ottrington family and eventually to Viscount Doneraile. The destruction was clearly never fully undone; by the time Taylor and Skinner produced their road atlas in 1778, the structure was already being marked as a ruin. What does survive is the return of a substantial house, probably seventeenth or eighteenth century in date, which originally contained the staircase, suggesting that some attempt at domestic rebuilding followed the Cromwellian destruction, even if the older castle itself was never restored.