St Sepulchre's Palace served for centuries as the seat of the Archbishop of Dublin, a complex of buildings whose history spans the medieval period and well beyond. Among its less celebrated features was a gaol, a facility that speaks to the considerable judicial and administrative power that medieval archbishops held over their territories, power that extended to imprisoning those who fell foul of ecclesiastical law or local governance.

The prison associated with the palace is documented as far back as around 1302, according to research by Clarke, who traces the building's complicated physical history across the following centuries. By 1326 the structure had already been partly demolished, suggesting either deliberate reduction or simple neglect in the decades after its construction. The walls were still standing in 1504, and in 1529 repairs were carried out, indicating that whatever remained of the building retained some practical use or was considered worth preserving even two centuries after its partial demolition. The palace itself, a large complex that functioned as a kind of fortified administrative centre for the archdiocese, would eventually pass out of ecclesiastical hands; the site is today associated with Kevin Street Garda Station, which occupies ground long layered with medieval and post-medieval activity.

Visitors to the Kevin Street area will find little visible fabric from the medieval palace, and nothing at all that can be clearly identified as the old prison structure. The site rewards those with an interest in reading the city's topography rather than its standing monuments. A walk around the block gives a sense of the scale that such a complex once occupied, and the street pattern in this part of the Liberties still echoes older boundaries. The relevant scholarship, including Clarke's work from 2002, remains the most useful guide to what once stood here and in what condition it survived across successive centuries.