A block of medieval houses sat directly in the centre of what is today the upper end of O'Connell Street, dividing the road into two narrow lanes and effectively making the thoroughfare walk around it rather than through it.

This block was known as 'Middle Row', and it sat between the West Gate and the junction of Mary Street and Bridge Street. The lane running to the north of it was called North Lane; the one to the south went by West Street or West Gate Street. Burke, writing in 1907 and drawing on earlier sources, places the row firmly in the streetscape and notes that it was still physically present in 1677, when the houses appear in the written record in connection with a corporation dispute. That mention is incidental, a footnote to a disagreement rather than a description, but it confirms the row was a live issue for the town's authorities at that date. At some point after 1677, probably during the late seventeenth or eighteenth century, the block was cleared away. The two narrow lanes merged back into one street, and the memory of the arrangement faded.

The broader pattern was not unusual in medieval Irish and English towns. Building in the centre of a market street or main thoroughfare was a recognised way of maximising valuable burgage plots, the long narrow strips of land leased to town-dwellers in exchange for rents and services to the lord. Over time these central rows often became inconvenient obstacles and were demolished as towns modernised their layouts. What makes this particular case quietly interesting is how long the row persisted and how little trace it left behind.