The religious house that once occupied this corner of the city belonged to the Fratres Cruciferi, or Crutched Friars, a branch of the Augustinian order whose name derived from the cross they carried or wore as part of their habit. Their priory and hospital dedicated to Saints Mary, Edward, and the Holy Cross existed quietly at the edge of the old town walls, wedged into the angle where the walls turned, south of the Franciscan Friary, and it has left almost nothing visible above ground.

According to the historian Ware, a figure identified as Simon Minor had placed Augustinians in the priory of Saints Mary and Edward before 1216, though the community was specifically a house of Cruciferi rather than mainstream Augustinian canons. A document from 1321 places the complex "near the bridge," and by 1559 it comprised the body of a church, a hospital, a steeple, a waste garden, barns, and a close. A map from 1590 confirms its position at Sir Harry's Mall. Scholars Gwynn and Hadcock have suggested the site may actually have comprised two distinct sets of buildings, one serving as the priory and the other as the hospital, each carrying a slightly different dedication. There is also a tantalising reference from an inquisition dated 1201 to 1202 to a church called "Sancte Marie Rotunda" that may relate to this site, though the matter remains unresolved.

There is nothing to see at the site in the conventional sense. The excavations that revealed the graveyard were carried out in advance of development works: Frank Coyne of Aegis Archaeology tested the ground at 57 to 58 Mary Street and 1 to 4 Sir Harry's Mall under licence, uncovering architectural fragments along with evidence of the burial ground. A subsequent dig in 2005, led by Linda G Lynch, brought the skeleton count to ninety. Sir Harry's Mall today is a riverside street with Georgian associations of its own, running along the Abbey River, and the approximate area of the former priory can be located by anyone with a map and a reasonable tolerance for looking at unremarkable ground and imagining what lies beneath it.