That ambiguity is itself a small historical curiosity. Dublin's south city has been built over, demolished, and rebuilt across many centuries, but even by the standards of vanished medieval structures, this one has slipped away with unusual thoroughness.

The deanery is recorded as existing in association with St Patrick's Cathedral from around 1267, a period when the cathedral itself was still relatively new, having been elevated to cathedral status in the early thirteenth century. A deanery, in ecclesiastical terms, is the official residence of a dean, the senior administrative clergyman beneath a bishop, and such buildings were typically substantial, reflecting the dignity of the office. The historical record, as summarised by Clarke in a 2002 survey of the area, notes that by the mid-sixteenth century the building required significant repair work, carried out between 1563 and 1565. That detail places it intact, if in poor condition, in the early decades of the Reformation period in Ireland, when the cathedral itself had passed from Catholic to Church of Ireland use under Henry VIII. Beyond those bare facts, the record falls silent. Its dimensions, its architecture, its later fate, and the exact address it once occupied are not documented in the surviving sources.

Because the site is not precisely located, there is no single spot a visitor can stand and say with confidence that this is where it was. The area around St Patrick's Cathedral, particularly along the streets of the Liberties quarter, rewards slow exploration on foot. The cathedral itself is open to visitors and its surrounds retain fragments of their medieval street pattern. Anyone with an interest in the layers of the city's ecclesiastical past might find it useful to consult Clarke's 2002 survey, which situates this and other lost structures within the broader topography of medieval Dublin. The absence of the building is, in its own way, part of the record.