It is a precise and somewhat rare diagnostic feature, the kind of architectural fingerprint that can anchor a building to a specific generation of craft practice. One of the two houses has a slightly steeper roof pitch than the other, and only a portion of its cornice has survived intact; the other retains more of the original detail, though both have been substantially altered inside over the centuries. A third building once stood attached to the western gable of the more westerly house and may have shared the same form, but it is no longer there.

What gives this junction an additional layer of curiosity is its name, or rather the name that earlier maps assigned to it. Grace's map of 1708 refers to the area as 'Jerusalem', and Steile's map of 1752 is more emphatic still, labelling it 'Old Jerusalem'. On the earlier of those two maps, the junction appears to have held only a small building rather than the pair that stands there now, which suggests the houses as they survive were either newly built or not yet fully established at the time Grace was surveying the town. Why this corner of Fethard acquired a name drawn from the holy city of the ancient world is not recorded, though such toponyms were not entirely unusual in medieval and early modern Irish towns, sometimes applied to peripheral or extramural areas with associations, real or symbolic, that have since been forgotten. Fethard itself is one of the best-preserved walled medieval towns in Ireland, and this junction sits close to the Watergate, one of the original entrance points through the town walls, which gives the location a significance that long predates the houses themselves.