For much of the medieval and early modern period it was known as Hangman's Lane, and somewhere along its corner stood a lime-and-stone gate that controlled passage through this part of the city's boundary. The gate itself has long since vanished, absorbed into centuries of rebuilding and renaming, but the documentary trail left behind is unusually precise for a structure of this kind.

The gate's origins are recorded in the Dublin Assembly Roll of 1466, which instructed that the masters of works of the city should construct a gate of lime and stone in Hangman's Lane. Lime-and-stone construction was the standard civic building method of the period, using mortar made from burnt limestone to bind cut or rubble stonework. By the early seventeenth century, the gate and the land on either side of it had become associated with a merchant family called Shelton. In 1600, a William Shelton petitioned the Dublin Assembly for a lease of sixty-one years on both sides of the gate, claiming it had previously been granted to his father, Henry Shelton, at a rent of eight pence Irish per annum. The Assembly agreed, on condition that William maintain the gate's leaves or shutters and keep the whole structure in good repair. The Shelton connection takes on an additional layer of interest through a 1623 petition from Eugene Matthews, Archbishop of Dublin, who identified Shelton's house at the corner of Hangman's Lane as one of the places in the city where Catholic priests were then celebrating Mass, describing it as lying beyond the bridge. In the climate of the Penal period, a merchant's gatehouse on the edge of the city apparently offered a measure of useful discretion.

The lane is shown on both Brooking's 1728 map of Dublin and Rocque's detailed 1756 map, where it still appears as Hammond Lane, and the Irish Historic Town Atlas of medieval Dublin offers a suggested location for the gate. There is nothing to see on the ground today, no masonry, no commemorative marker, and the street itself gives little away. The interest lies in tracing the lane on those historical maps and cross-referencing it with the Assembly Roll entries, which are unusually vivid in their language. The corner where Shelton's house once stood, somewhere at the junction that later maps record, is now simply part of the ordinary fabric of the south city.