The Dublin Workhouse predates those more familiar red-brick grimnesses by well over a century, making it one of the earlier formal attempts in Ireland to deal with urban poverty through institutional means rather than parish relief or simple charity.

According to Peter Somerville-Large, the Dublin Workhouse was founded in 1703, placing it firmly in the early eighteenth century, a period when Dublin was expanding rapidly and the visible presence of beggars and vagrants on its streets had become a matter of civic anxiety. The workhouse model, broadly speaking, was borrowed from English poor-relief thinking: those without means would be housed, fed, and set to labour, with the institution theoretically sustaining itself through the work produced. In practice, such places were rarely financially self-sufficient, and their conditions varied enormously depending on management and funding. The 1703 foundation in Dublin south city represents an early and locally specific response to poverty in what was then becoming one of the busier urban centres in the British Isles.

The surviving physical fabric, if any remains, is not always easy to identify on a casual walk through the area, since workhouse buildings were frequently repurposed, demolished, or absorbed into later institutional complexes over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Anyone with an interest in early modern Dublin social history would do well to approach the site with a good historical map alongside them, as street patterns and building uses have shifted considerably since 1703. The south city area rewards slow exploration on foot, and cross-referencing the location against period cartography, such as Rocque's 1756 map of Dublin, can help situate what was once there within the present streetscape.