During excavations in 1972 and 1973, archaeologists uncovered a stone-built culvert, a covered channel designed to carry water underground, stretching more than thirty metres in length. That a structure of this scale survived at all beneath one of the city's most heavily developed historic quarters makes it all the more remarkable.

The dig at Christ Church Place, led by archaeologist B. Ó Ríordáin, revealed structural remains dating to the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Alongside the culvert, excavators found the remains of a mortared stone building, a construction method that indicated a degree of permanence and civic investment in the area. Much of that building had been demolished by the early fourteenth century, suggesting the site saw significant change within a relatively short period. The culvert itself would have formed part of the broader effort to manage water flow in a densely occupied urban district, channelling runoff or a watercourse away from buildings and streets at a time when Dublin was expanding considerably beyond its Viking-age core.

Christ Church Place sits immediately to the south of the cathedral and is easily reached on foot from the city centre. The excavated features are no longer visible above ground, having been recorded and reburied in the course of development, so there is nothing to see at street level in the conventional sense. What the site offers instead is the knowledge that the ground underfoot preserves, or once preserved, a layered medieval infrastructure. For those interested in the archaeology of medieval Dublin more broadly, the work of Ó Ríordáin at this and nearby sites is well documented and provides a useful framework for understanding how the city's early streetscape and water systems were organised.