Excavations carried out in 1993 along the south city quays revealed that the land underfoot was not always land at all, but foreshore, gradually wrestled from the tidal margin through a series of deliberate reclamation efforts that transformed the city's relationship with the River Liffey.

The 1993 dig, led by Hayden, uncovered four separate wooden revetments, the timber-framed retaining walls used to hold back water and consolidate newly claimed ground. Two of these were oriented east to west, and two ran north to south, suggesting a phased and organised approach to pushing the city's boundary outward across the mud. Once the ground was stabilised, habitation followed. The earliest structures identified on the reclaimed surface included two substantial masonry buildings. One was a rectangular structure measuring roughly ten metres wide and seventeen metres long, with walls approximately 1.6 metres thick, the kind of construction that implies serious investment and permanence rather than improvised settlement. The second building was associated with an area of rough paving, pointing to some form of functional outdoor space, perhaps a yard or working area connected to quayside activity.

There is nothing visually marked at street level today to indicate what lies beneath, and that is part of what makes the site worth thinking about. The quays along Dublin's south city are busy and unremarkable on the surface, but the ground beneath them preserves a sequence of medieval engineering that explains how the city came to occupy the space it does. Anyone with an interest in urban archaeology and the medieval port will find it useful to read Hayden's 1993 report, which documents the stratigraphic evidence in detail. The layers of reclamation are not visible, but knowing they are there changes how an ordinary stretch of quayside feels underfoot.