It is a slight trace, but in archaeology, slight traces are often the most intriguing kind. Hanbury Lane, now a quiet and largely unremarkable street in the Liberties, carries within its soil the faint signature of an industrial process that once supplied one of the more decorative needs of medieval urban life.

Tile kilns were specialist operations, typically producing fired ceramic floor or roof tiles for churches, civic buildings, and the homes of wealthier residents. The evidence at Hanbury Lane was noted by Claire Walsh in her archaeological reports from 2000, which recorded the discovery of tiles at the site and interpreted their presence as indicative of kiln activity nearby. The Liberties area of Dublin was, through the medieval and early modern periods, a zone of craft and industry situated just beyond the walls of the city proper, and a tile-making operation here would fit that broader pattern of manufacture and trade concentrated in this part of the urban fringe.

There is nothing visible at Hanbury Lane today that marks the former presence of this industry. The value of the site lies entirely in what lies beneath or has been recorded through excavation, making it the kind of place that rewards those with an interest in reading urban landscapes rather than expecting them to announce themselves. For anyone exploring the Liberties on foot, Hanbury Lane sits close to the Coombe and is easily walked as part of a broader circuit of the area's medieval and industrial past. The tiles themselves, rather than the ground they came from, are the real carriers of the story.