An excavation carried out in 2001 to the rear of number 29 uncovered the remains of a building that sat at a noticeably different angle to the street as it exists today, a small but telling sign that the town's layout was once quite different from the one familiar to anyone walking through it now.

Only one corner of the structure was caught within the trench, and even that had been disturbed by a later pit, so its full shape remains uncertain. Archaeologists described it as rectangular or subrectangular, and the construction method is similarly open to interpretation. The walls may have been formed from unsupported clay, meaning solid earthen walls built without a wicker or basketwork internal framework to hold them in place, or the building may have had a timber frame set directly on the ground rather than on stone footings. Either approach would be consistent with vernacular building traditions in medieval Irish towns. What is clear is that this structure did not stand alone for long in the sequence of occupation: it was replaced by a second building on the same ground, which was itself later replaced by a third, each one layered over the last like pages turning on the same spot.