Measuring approximately 15 metres east to west and 10 metres north to south, this faint impression was confidently labelled as the ‘site of Castle’ on the 1840 Ordnance Survey six-inch map. Yet despite this cartographic certainty, no historical records have ever surfaced to confirm that a castle actually stood here.

The land’s ownership provides the only tangible link to the past; in 1641, it belonged to Garrett Fitzgerald of Dromana, a member of one of Ireland’s most influential Norman families. The Fitzgeralds were certainly castle builders elsewhere in the region, which might explain why early surveyors believed they’d found the remnants of a fortification here. Whether this was a case of mistaken identity, local legend influencing the mapmakers, or perhaps the site of a long-forgotten defensive structure that never made it into the written record remains unknown.

Today, the site offers little to the casual observer; the rectangular outline that caught the attention of 19th-century surveyors is completely invisible at ground level, hidden beneath the pastoral landscape. Only aerial photography or geophysical survey might reveal what, if anything, lies beneath the surface. The entry in the Archaeological Inventory of County Waterford, published in 1999 and updated in 2009, maintains a scholarly scepticism about the site’s true nature, leaving this corner of Waterford’s history wrapped in uncertainty.