It appears in the historical record clearly enough, a thatched structure on churchland in what is now a northside Dublin suburb, but its precise location has never been established. It exists, in a sense, only on paper.

The source for this phantom building is the Civil Survey of 1654 to 1656, one of the most ambitious land assessments ever carried out in Ireland. Commissioned by the Cromwellian administration to establish land ownership and value following the upheavals of the 1640s, the survey recorded properties across the country in considerable detail, including structures, land quality, and tenure. The entry for the parish of Raheny, cited by the historian R.C. Simington in his 1945 edition of the survey, notes a thatched house standing on churchland. Beyond that brief description, nothing further is recorded. Whether the building was already old by the time the surveyors reached Raheny, whether it was in use or in decay, and who may have occupied it, none of that survives in the record. The monument entry, compiled by Geraldine Stout and uploaded to the archaeological database in August 2011, carries the frank admission that the exact location of the monument is unknown.

For a visitor, that uncertainty is itself the point of interest. Raheny today is a settled residential area to the north of Dublin Bay, and its medieval parish church of St Assam still stands as a physical anchor to the area's older layers. Walking around the vicinity of the old churchland, you are in the general territory of the lost house, though no marker indicates where it stood. The Civil Survey entry is findable through Simington's published volume, and the Archaeological Survey of Ireland database holds the compiled record. This is less a site to visit than a gap to contemplate, a reminder that historical documentation and physical survival do not always coincide, and that the suburban landscape often contains absences as much as it contains things.