No wall, arch, or foundation stone survives above ground, and even the question of where exactly it stood has been argued over for centuries. What does survive is the name: Austin Friars Street, which in all likelihood preserves the memory of the Augustinian canons who once kept a religious house somewhere along this stretch of the town.

The priory was founded around 1227 by Ralph Petit, bishop of Meath, and was known by the Latin name Domus Dei, meaning House of God. Augustinian canons were not monks in the enclosed sense but followed the Rule of St Augustine as a community of priests, often running hospitals and schools alongside their religious duties. The name Domus Dei itself suggests a charitable function, and an inquisition of 1571 mentions a building called 'the spittle', an older term for a hospital or almshouse, associated with the site. By 1306, the Ecclesiastical Taxation of Ireland valued the temporalities of the house at £8 18s. 8d., a modest but respectable sum. In 1444 a papal indulgence was granted to help fund repairs to the church, suggesting the building was already showing its age. At the Dissolution of the monasteries, commissioners assessed what was left: the church, belfry, and living quarters were deemed worth keeping for the use of the Lord Deputy and the defence of the area, but the stone cloister, the covered walkway enclosing the central courtyard typical of monastic complexes, was judged dispensable and ordered to be thrown down. A small castle was noted nearby, along with a garden outside the east gate, details that imply the complex once stood within its own precinct wall. The site was granted to Sir Richard Tuite in 1560, and by 1667 it was still significant enough to be named in a land confirmation as 'The Abby and Precincts of ye Cannons Regular'. Writing in 1682, the antiquarian Sir Henry Piers described ruins that were by then 'scarcely visible', placing the priory at the east end of the town.

By the mid-nineteenth century even those scant remains were gone. A correspondent writing in 1844 to 1845 noted that the ruins, though modest, had been 'an interesting specimen of the early pointed style of architecture', but had already been cleared to make way for extensions to the Catholic cathedral. The 1910 Ordnance Survey map marks the abbey's location at the western end of Austin Friars Street, near what is now the Cross Keys junction with McCurtain Street, and burials uncovered at that junction in 1879 and 1900 lend some weight to that placement. The street name, then, is the most legible trace remaining of a religious house that once fed the poor, sheltered the sick, and apparently made itself useful enough to a Tudor administration that they chose to preserve parts of it, at least for a while.