These are not the grand relics of church or castle but the ordinary leavings of a household in Hiberno-Norse Dublin, preserved by the accident of urban stratigraphy until archaeologists reached them in 1972 and 1973.

The excavations, led by O Riordain, revealed a post and wattle structure, a technique in which upright wooden posts are interwoven with flexible rods to form walls, finished with daub or similar material. The house measured 9.50 metres long and 4.45 metres wide, its long axis running east to west. A one-metre doorway, flanked by stout oak jambs, sat in an off-central position along the southern wall, a small but telling asymmetry. The hearth occupied the centre of the floor, and around it the ground was packed mud and trodden soil; elsewhere, brushwood served as flooring. Among the objects recovered were a well-preserved iron sword of late Viking type, inscribed SINIM INI IS on one face of the blade, a Hiberno-Norse coin of late eleventh century date, sherds of a glazed and decorated Anglo-Saxon tripod pitcher, and a small wooden weaving tablet. Close by, excavators found quantities of sawn antler tines and waste comb blanks, the debris of a comb-maker's workshop. One unfinished comb, nine blanks riveted between back plates, had only two teeth cut before a sawing error rendered it useless and it was discarded, preserving an unusually clear snapshot of the manufacturing process. A handled wooden object resembling a baker's shovel or spade carried a runic inscription of seven letters reading KIRLAKAR. A later phase of activity on the same site produced remains of a mortared stone building from the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, already largely demolished by the early fourteenth century, along with polychrome pottery of south-west French type and an English reckoning counter of around 1300.

The site lies in the area immediately south of Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin city centre. There is nothing to see at ground level today; the finds from the excavation are the real point of access, and several are held in the collections of the National Museum of Ireland on Kildare Street, where the sword in particular repays close attention. Anyone interested in the comb-making assemblage or the runic inscription will find the original excavation report, cited to O Riordain, the most detailed account available.