St Stephen's Island, now fully absorbed into the city's fabric through land reclamation, sat on the eastern side of the River Corrib just outside the northern gate of the medieval town. That an entire island, complete with a religious complex, could vanish so thoroughly into urban ground is quietly remarkable.

The friary was founded in 1296 by William de Burgo, a member of the powerful Anglo-Norman family whose influence across Connacht left a long trail of ecclesiastical and military foundations. The full scale of the complex is difficult to reconstruct; sixteenth and seventeenth-century maps offer partial glimpses of the layout, but the precise arrangement of its buildings remains unclear. The friary's fortunes shifted dramatically in 1657, when almost all its structures were demolished, with only the church left standing, repurposed as a courthouse. It was a fate common to many Irish religious houses in the Cromwellian period, when former sacred spaces were commandeered for civic or military use. The community returned to the site in 1689, made repairs in 1723 to 1724, and by 1781 had rebuilt the complex entirely. Among the friary's practical assets was a watermill on the Corrib, a reminder that medieval religious houses were often substantial economic operations as much as spiritual ones.

For anyone walking Francis Street today, the original medieval friary stands nowhere above ground. Its footprint lies somewhere to the north of the current church building, beneath streets and buildings that give no obvious signal of what came before. The island it occupied exists only in historical memory, the river having long since been managed and the land consolidated into the surrounding city.