Beneath the pavement of John Street in Waterford city, the remains of an early industrial operation were quietly waiting. Test excavations at a site known as Grady's Yard uncovered three clay-bonded walls, the physical footprint of a tannery that once fronted directly onto the street and had been doing business since at least the sixteenth century.

The excavations, carried out by archaeologist Dave Pollock under licence references 01E0323 and 04E1264, recovered this structural evidence during two separate interventions at the John Street site. A tannery, in this context, was a facility for converting raw animal hides into leather through a process involving bark-derived tannins and prolonged soaking in pits. The clay-bonded construction of the surviving walls, mortarless and built to contain rather than impress, is consistent with the functional, often damp demands of the trade. That the building fronted John Street suggests it occupied a commercially accessible position within the medieval and post-medieval urban fabric of the city, with Waterford at that period being one of the most significant trading centres in Ireland.