But excavations in 2001 to the rear of 29 Main Street in Cashel, County Tipperary, uncovered the remains of a building whose construction details quietly illuminate how urban structures were put together in an earlier period of the town's life. The find was modest in scale but telling in its specifics: a timber-framed building set on a footing of mortared and clay-bonded stone roughly 0.4 metres high, with part of its roof covered in slate.

The building's orientation is one of its more intriguing qualities. It aligned neatly with the present line of Main Street, suggesting that the street's layout had already been established by the time this structure was standing, and that whoever built it was working within a recognised urban framework rather than setting out something new. Timber-framing on a low stone base was a practical and widely used method, keeping the wooden superstructure off the damp ground while allowing relatively quick construction above. The use of slate for at least part of the roof points to a degree of investment in the building's longevity. At some later point, this structure was replaced by another building on the same site, a typical pattern in towns where plots were continuously reused across generations and centuries.