Beneath a stretch of level pasture about 300 metres east of the River Liffey in County Kildare, the faint outline of a medieval town runs silently through the soil. A linear cropmark, visible in aerial photography, traces an east-west line across fields roughly 140 metres south of a now-ruined Augustinian priory. That cropmark is thought to be all that survives, at ground level, of town walls described in a detailed government survey carried out at the moment of the priory's dissolution in November 1540. A second, circular cropmark intersects it nearby, and may mark the site of a dovecote that once stood on those same walls. The settlement around the priory has otherwise largely vanished, swallowed by centuries of ploughing and pasture.

The priory at Greatconnell was founded in 1202 by Meyler Fitzhenry and dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary and St David. By the time the Crown suppressed it on the 24th of November 1540, it had grown into a substantial estate: 131 acres of demesne, over 1,260 acres of possessions in total, five castles, a mill, numerous messuages and cottages, and town walls with a dovecote built into them. The dissolution survey is remarkably specific. Robert Wesley, presumably the last prior, received a pension of just over £13; five other canons received lesser amounts. The jurors noted that all the buildings were still standing. The church nave had served as the parish church from time immemorial, so it was to be spared, but the chancel and Lady Chapel could be demolished. The belfry, they suggested, might be converted into a castle or fortilage, a small fortified structure, to defend the town and surrounding district. The monastic estate passed through several hands, including Edward Randolfe, Sir Edward Butler, Sir Nicholas White in 1560, and Sir Edmond Butler in 1566. A geophysical survey carried out in 2006 by Bonsall and Grimson mapped around seven hectares of sub-surface remains, identifying levelled masonry, probable burials, a possible trivallate enclosure, the traces of a street pattern, burgage plots, burgage plots being the long narrow land holdings typical of a medieval planned town, and plough furrows running on multiple alignments. The east gable of the Lady Chapel was later incorporated into the walls of a graveyard established after 1700, and that graveyard is among the few above-ground traces of the whole complex that remain visible today.