A pillory, for those unfamiliar with the apparatus, was a wooden framework mounted on a post, fitted with holes through which a convicted offender's head and hands were locked, leaving them exposed to public view and whatever the crowd chose to throw. It was a form of punishment that depended entirely on community participation for its effect, and its placement near a major civic and ecclesiastical landmark was entirely deliberate. The precise spot, however, has been lost.

The reference comes from historian Clarke, writing in 2002, who notes the pillory's association with Christchurch Cathedral in 1564. That period places it firmly in the mid-Tudor administration of Dublin, when the city was being reshaped by colonial governance and the cathedral itself had recently been drawn into the upheavals of the Reformation. Public punishment was a fixture of civic life in this era, and positioning a pillory near a cathedral was not unusual; such structures tended to appear at busy, prominent locations where foot traffic guaranteed an audience. The cathedral precinct, one of the oldest and most frequented parts of the medieval city, would have served that purpose well. Beyond the date and the general association with Christchurch, the record does not tell us more.

Because the site cannot be precisely located, there is nothing to visit in any conventional sense, and no marker or structure survives. What does survive is the area itself. Christchurch Cathedral stands in the older southern part of the city centre, and the streets immediately around it, including Fishamble Street and the remnants of the medieval street pattern, still carry the rough outline of the Tudor-era city. Anyone with an interest in how public authority made itself visible in sixteenth-century Dublin might find it worth pausing in that vicinity, not to find something, but to consider what has disappeared. The absence of the pillory is itself part of the historical record.