What was uncovered here was not a single fortification but a sequence of them, each superseding the last as the settlement grew in ambition and permanence. It is the kind of stratigraphic story that rarely survives the churn of a city, which makes the 1993 excavations on the south side of Dublin's historic core all the more valuable.

The dig revealed that the earliest defences were earthen, as was common in early medieval settlements before stone became the standard medium of permanence. A low counter-scarp bank, standing only about 0.75 metres high, came first. A counter-scarp bank is the outward-facing slope of a defensive ditch, designed to slow or expose an approaching enemy. Over time this modest feature was augmented into a substantial raised mound reaching four metres in height and five metres in width, reinforced with a post and wattle fence, the kind of timber palisade work familiar from early Irish and Norse settlement sites. By the twelfth century, this earthen arrangement had been replaced by a stone wall some 3.5 metres high, its rear face battered, meaning it sloped inward toward the base for structural stability. Further along the same site, the Anglo-Norman town wall came to light, and abutting it was a substantial two-storey stone building measuring 11.6 metres in length and 6.4 metres in width. Its eastern wall retained an original doorway with jambs of Dundry stone, a fine-grained oolitic limestone quarried near Bristol and imported to Ireland by the Anglo-Normans as a prestige building material. The building has been interpreted as a garrison, housing troops responsible for defending this stretch of the town wall, as set out by Walsh in 1994.

There is nothing to see at ground level today; these remains are buried, recorded, and largely inaccessible to the casual visitor. Their significance lives in the archive and in publications rather than in any visible monument. For those with a particular interest in urban archaeology, the Walsh 1994 report is the primary source, and the findings contribute to a broader picture of Dublin's defensive evolution that can be traced through the city's various museum collections, particularly at Dublin Castle and the National Museum of Ireland on Kildare Street, where finds from comparable excavations are displayed in context.