It is one of the few tangible traces of a Dominican priory whose very existence became a matter of bitter dispute among religious orders in the aftermath of Cromwellian Ireland.

The story of this foundation is genuinely tangled. One tradition holds that a Dominican friary was established in Clonmel as early as 1269, but a survey of friaries made in 1541 lists only Carmelite and Franciscan houses in the town, with no mention of the Dominicans. The more plausible reading, supported by Gwynn and Hadcock, is that the community was not established until shortly before 1643, and that it survived only until the Cromwellian suppression of the 1650s. Four Dominican friars are recorded as martyrs in the years between 1649 and 1651. When the order attempted to return to Clonmel after the Restoration of Charles II, they found themselves in an unexpected bind: unable to demonstrate that theirs was an ancient foundation, they were successfully opposed by the Franciscans, who prevented them from re-establishing themselves in the town. The question of seniority among mendicant orders, the Dominicans, Franciscans, Carmelites, and Augustinians, carried real institutional weight, and without documentary proof of an early foundation date, the Dominicans had no standing to press their claim. There is one further curiosity associated with the site. A sheela-na-gig, a carved stone figure of a type found on medieval Irish churches and tower houses, was unearthed in Blue Anchor Lane in 1944 and is thought to have some connection to the priory, though the precise circumstances of its original placement remain unclear.