A frankhouse, in the context of a medieval religious institution, was a dwelling or lodging associated with a monastic house, often used to extend hospitality or shelter to those under the abbey's protection or patronage. This one belonged to St. Thomas's Abbey, one of the most significant Augustinian foundations in medieval Dublin, and the single surviving reference to it comes from 1527, a moment when the abbey itself had only a decade or so left before the upheavals of the Reformation would sweep it away.

The historian Clarke is the source for what little we know. The reference is brief: a frankhouse of St Thomas's Abbey, located somewhere in the vicinity of St. Catherine's Church, recorded in 1527. St. Thomas's Abbey had been founded in the twelfth century and by the early sixteenth century was a substantial landholder in the Liberties area of Dublin. The frankhouse likely formed part of the abbey's wider network of properties in that district, though its exact function in this instance is not spelled out. No precise location has been established, which means it occupies a curious position in the historical record, acknowledged but essentially unplaceable.

There is no structure to visit, no marker to locate, and no physical trace that has been identified. What the area around Thomas Street and St. Catherine's Church does offer is a streetscape that has changed enormously over the centuries but still carries the basic topography of the medieval Liberties. St. Catherine's Church itself, the Church of Ireland building on Thomas Street, is a recognisable landmark and serves as the closest fixed point to where the frankhouse may once have stood. For anyone interested in the pre-Reformation city, walking this stretch of Thomas Street with an awareness of the abbey's former presence in the area is probably as close as it is possible to get to this particular, quietly vanished building.