Tanning, the process of converting raw animal hides into durable leather using tannin derived from oak bark or other organic materials, was a trades-person's staple of any functioning medieval town, but it was also notoriously noxious work. The pits required for soaking hides produced a powerful stench, which is partly why tanners were so often pushed to the margins of urban settlements. That this particular operation sat close to the old city boundary is no accident.

Excavations carried out in 1993 by Linzi Simpson brought the physical remnants of this trade back into the light. The dig exposed three wooden barrels and part of a timber-lined rectangular pit, the kind of structure used to hold the soaking liquors central to the tanning process. Documentary sources independently place a tanning house at this same location as far back as the late fifteenth century, giving the archaeological finds a firm historical anchor. The combination of physical evidence and written record is relatively rare for urban industrial sites of this period, and it anchors what might otherwise seem like a minor find within a longer working life for the site.

The corner of Bride Street and Ship Street Little sits just south of Dublin Castle, within easy walking distance of the city centre. There is nothing to mark the spot today, and the excavated material has long since been recorded and removed to archive. What a visitor can do, however, is read the street geography itself. Ship Street Little follows a line that once skirted the outer defences of the medieval city, and the proximity of the tannery to that boundary reflects the way noxious trades were tolerated on the urban edge rather than within it. The area rewards a slow walk with a good map of medieval Dublin, where the logic of where things were placed, and why, begins to come clear in the modern streetscape.