In 1949, during construction of a Parochial Rest Centre at Hanbury Lane, off Meath Street at the Coombe, workers uncovered human remains at the very lowest level of the foundation cuttings. The depth at which the bones were found suggests they predate the familiar layers of post-medieval city life, though without further excavation at the time, precisely how far back they reach remains an open question. A second discovery followed in September 1954, when additional remains were recovered from the same general vicinity and recorded by the National Museum of Ireland.

The Coombe is one of the oldest inhabited parts of Dublin, a district whose street names and topography speak to centuries of continuous settlement stretching back well before the Anglo-Norman period. Hanbury Lane itself sits in a neighbourhood that was already densely built-up by the early modern period, meaning that construction work in the area has always carried the risk, or perhaps the likelihood, of cutting through earlier layers of human activity. The 1949 find was not excavated as part of any planned archaeological investigation; the remains came to light incidentally, as so many urban discoveries do, and the precise location within the site is now recorded as unknown. The notes compiled by Geraldine Stout, uploaded to the record in February 2013, reflect how much information was simply not gathered at the time, which was common practice in mid-twentieth-century Ireland before statutory protections for archaeological sites were in place.

There is, practically speaking, nothing to see at this location today. The Parochial Rest Centre was built, the city moved on, and the precise spot where the bones were found cannot be pinpointed. What the record does offer is a reminder of how layered urban ground can be, particularly in a neighbourhood as old as the Coombe. Anyone walking along Meath Street or turning down towards Hanbury Lane is moving through an area where the ground beneath the tarmac and foundations still holds more than the current streetscape suggests.