That kind of near-invisibility is not unusual for vernacular buildings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when most ordinary structures went unrecorded unless they happened to appear in a legal dispute, a property transaction, or, as here, a passing reference in a later historical account.

The sole surviving mention comes from Clarke's 2002 study, which notes the former Smith's houses as they appeared in a 1608 source. The phrasing, "former" houses, suggests the buildings were already considered noteworthy in their absence by that point, perhaps recently demolished or converted, their original occupant or owner identified only by a trade name. In a city undergoing significant change during the early decades of the seventeenth century, the disappearance of such structures was commonplace. Dublin's south city at this period was a dense and shifting urban environment, with property boundaries, tenancies, and building uses changing hands frequently in the aftermath of Tudor reorganisation and the expansion of the civic fabric beyond the old medieval core.

Because the site has not been precisely located, there is no specific address or plot to visit. What remains is essentially a documentary ghost, a reference embedded in scholarship that points toward a now-irrecoverable urban past. Researchers with an interest in early modern Dublin might consult Clarke's 2002 work directly for the surrounding context, which may offer clues about the broader neighbourhood in which the houses stood. For anyone walking the south city today and curious about what lies beneath the present streetscape, this kind of unlocated reference is a useful reminder that the visible city represents only a fraction of what was once built, occupied, and eventually forgotten.