Romanesque stonework, characterised by rounded arches, geometric patterning, and elaborate carved detail, reached Ireland in the twelfth century and produced some of the country's most ornate ecclesiastical architecture. To find pieces of it lying loose among headstones, weathering quietly in a country graveyard, is the kind of thing that stops you mid-step.

The graveyard at Kilmeen sits on a slight rise in open grassland, its roughly rectangular boundary, approximately 55 metres north to south and 53 metres east to west, defined by a stone wall. Within it stand two significant medieval remains: the ruins of a church in the north-east sector and, in the north-west, the stump of a round tower. Round towers were a characteristic feature of early Irish monastic sites, tall and freestanding, used variously as bell towers, landmarks, and places of refuge. That both structures survive here, even in ruin, suggests this was once a site of some ecclesiastical importance. The headstones visible today date from the eighteenth century, but the ground they mark is considerably older. Immediately to the north of the church's east end, local tradition identifies a children's burial ground, known in Irish as a cillín, a type of informal burial place historically used for unbaptised infants and others excluded from consecrated ground by church law.

Access to the graveyard is through a gateway on the south-west side. The Romanesque fragments scattered around the interior are worth examining closely; details of interlace, chevron, or figural carving can sometimes still be read in the stone despite centuries of exposure.