The deanery, as it came to be known, has left no visible trace above ground, yet the sequence of uses the site passed through, each layer of authority replacing the last, gives it a peculiar coherence as a place where institutional power kept returning to the same patch of ground.

The earliest documentary glimpse of the building comes from 1295, and it arrives in the form of a grievance. John Dullard, chancellor of Limerick's church, was making his way to the dean's house on some matter of business that apparently concerned Roger de Lesse, the sheriff of Limerick. De Lesse, apparently unwilling to let the visit proceed, seized Dullard and had him imprisoned in Limerick Castle nearby. The complaint was recorded, and the incident survives as a small but vivid illustration of how tightly ecclesiastical and civic authority were tangled together in medieval Limerick. By 1665 the building was documented as the dean's house on Newgate Lane West, with a yard noted in 1747 and a reference to Dean's Court appearing in 1783. By 1788, plans were already being drawn up to clear the deanery and build a city gaol on the site. That gaol was constructed by 1813 and remained standing until it was demolished and replaced by the present Limerick Civic Offices, completed in 1988.

There is nothing to see of the medieval building itself today, though a wall plaque at the civic offices acknowledges the gaol that preceded it. The site sits at the northern end of Merchants Quay, which is straightforward to find along the riverside. For anyone interested in tracing the outline of medieval Limerick, the location is worth pausing at, less for what stands there now than for the long chain of institutional use it represents, running from a dean's stone house to a chancellor's wrongful imprisonment to a city gaol, all on the same quiet stretch of quay.