The word guild conjures the organised brotherhoods of craftsmen and merchants who dominated urban economic life across medieval Europe, and Dublin was no exception. These were not merely professional bodies; they controlled who could trade, set standards, managed charitable obligations, and held considerable social weight within the communities they served.

The historical thread here runs through St Audoen's Church, one of the oldest surviving medieval parish churches in Dublin, which still stands on High Street in the Liberties. According to historian H.B. Clarke, a guild dedicated to St Anne was based there from at least the mid-fifteenth century. Guilds of this kind were often attached to parish churches, using them as the site of their devotional and administrative life, endowing altars, funding masses for deceased members, and gathering for feast days. St Anne's Guild would have been one of several such organisations operating in the city at the time, each with its own patron saint, its own chapel or altar, and its own claim on the loyalties of its members. The precise relationship between that guild and the building now called Guildhall is not spelled out in the surviving notes, but the naming convention suggests a link to this tradition of organised civic and trade life.

St Audoen's Church is accessible on High Street, where two versions of the building effectively coexist: the medieval Church of Ireland structure, which is managed by the Office of Public Works and open to visitors during summer months, and the larger nineteenth-century Roman Catholic church of the same name immediately adjacent. The medieval building retains significant fabric from the Norman period, including its Romanesque west doorway. For anyone interested in the guild connection, the church interior and its associated park, which passes through the only surviving section of the old city walls at St Audoen's Arch, offer a relatively compact way to trace several overlapping layers of Dublin's medieval history in a single visit.