No ruins mark the ground, no interpretive panel points the way, yet the area between Bishop Street and the old town wall was once home to a religious community of women whose presence in the city predates much of the medieval streetscape that surrounded them.

The priory was founded by Donal O'Brien, likely in the late twelfth century, around the time of the Anglo-Norman arrival in Ireland. The Augustinian Black nuns, so called for the colour of their habit, followed the Rule of Saint Augustine and were one of the less commonly encountered female religious orders in medieval Ireland. By the time Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries reached Limerick in 1541, the priory of St Peter was already in a state of decay; contemporary records noted the buildings were ruinous, though they still occupied a site of roughly three-quarters of an acre. A 1590 map of the city confirms the location, placing it clearly between Bishop Street and the town wall. The most tangible remnant came to light in 1946, when a carved limestone head was found in the area. The scholar John Hunt examined it and suggested, in a paper published between 1949 and 1952, that its style was Romanesque, meaning it belonged to the rounded-arch decorative tradition that preceded Gothic stonework, broadly common in Ireland from the twelfth century. Hunt believed it may have originated with the priory itself.

The limestone head is now held by Limerick Museum, which makes it the most accessible connection to this otherwise vanished community. The museum is the obvious starting point for anyone curious about the priory, since nothing structural remains on the ground in St Peter's Cell. The area itself is worth a short visit simply to place the history in a physical context, to stand in a named space and understand that the name has carried a memory for several centuries, even when the stones that gave rise to it are long gone.