The quayside as it exists today was built in 1763, and the demolition required to create it erased what had stood there for generations. What makes this particular spot quietly strange is that the mill did not simply disappear; it left behind biological evidence, buried in the ground alongside the remains of a medieval town wall, that points directly to the grain trade it once served.

Nicholas Arthur's Mill, also known as Comyn's Mills, appears on Hardiman's map of around 1590 and is noted by the architectural historian Harold Leask as sitting roughly in the middle of the present George's Quay. When archaeologist Ed O'Donovan led excavations along the Abbey River in the late 1990s and early 2000s, carried out on behalf of Margaret Gowen and Co. Ltd as part of the Limerick Main Drainage Scheme, the work around the junction of Creagh Lane and George's Quay turned up something unexpected. Alongside sections of the medieval town wall, organic deposits dating to the sixteenth century were found to contain the grain weevil Sitophilus granarius, an insect that lives exclusively in stored grain and depends entirely on human activity for its spread. Its presence in those layers is thought to connect directly to grain being stored around the mill site. The excavations also identified the foundations of an early weir in the riverbed, a structure that pre-dates both Charlotte's Quay and Bank Place and is interpreted as a head-race, a channel designed to direct water current to drive mill machinery, serving two mills positioned on opposite sides of the Abbey River.

The site itself is not marked or signposted, and there is nothing visible above ground to indicate what lies beneath. George's Quay runs along the Abbey River in the city centre, and the junction with Creagh Lane, where much of the significant archaeology was uncovered, is easily walked. The early maps on which Nicholas Arthur's Mill appears, including the Pacata Hibernia map, Hardiman's map, and Speed's map, are the clearest way to orient yourself to what once stood here. Those same maps show structures projecting outward from the town wall along the Abbey River, a configuration that excavation has since confirmed in the ground. The archaeology is now published through the national excavations database, and the weir foundations remain recorded in the Sites and Monuments Record under reference LI005-017186.