In 1994, archaeologists excavating at numbers 60 to 61 uncovered three foundation trenches left behind by timber-framed structures, the timber itself long gone but the negative shapes of the building preserved in the underlying boulder clay. It is the kind of survival that rarely makes headlines, yet it offers a remarkably direct connection to the physical fabric of late medieval urban life.

The excavation, reported by O'Flanagan in 1995, exposed two parallel trenches of equal depth running beneath what had been the front and back walls of the demolished houses. The way these trenches were filled, intermittently rather than all at once, indicated that the site had seen several phases of occupation spanning roughly 200 to 300 years, from the 14th or 15th century through to the 17th. This kind of phased accumulation is typical of urban plots that remained in more or less continuous use across generations, with structures repaired, replaced, or slightly repositioned over time. What struck the excavators as particularly significant was the depth of the buildings: 25 feet, or about 8.2 metres, a dimension that corresponds closely to post-medieval urban houses recorded at Kirwans Lane in Galway and the well-preserved Rothe House in Kilkenny, a 16th-century merchant townhouse that still stands today. That consistency across three Irish towns suggests these were not idiosyncratic local arrangements but reflected a broadly shared tradition of urban domestic building.

Francis Street today is a busy road running through the Liberties, best known for its antique dealers and proximity to St Patrick's Cathedral. There is nothing visible above ground to mark the 1994 excavation, and no permanent public display of its findings. Anyone interested in the archaeology would need to consult O'Flanagan's 1995 report through a library or archive. The value of coming here is less about what can be seen and more about what the streetscape conceals: a city that was already dense, already commercially active, and already building to recognisable urban proportions, centuries before most of its current fabric was laid down.