When archaeologists moved in during 1996, they found something older than the building itself waiting underground, a reminder that the ground beneath medieval Dublin is rarely as empty as it looks.

The excavations, reported by H. Kehoe in 1997, uncovered a series of walls built from large mortared limestone blocks. These were not remnants of the existing guildhall structure but something earlier, and their association with local medieval pottery placed them firmly within Dublin's medieval period. The hall itself, which dates to around 1706 and was built for the Guild of Tailors, one of the trade guilds that once regulated craft and commerce in the city, sits within the Liberties, a neighbourhood that developed partly outside the jurisdiction of the old city walls. The discovery of substantial mortared stonework beneath it suggests organised construction on this plot well before the guildhall was ever conceived. The pottery finds help anchor the chronology, since local Dublin-made wares are well enough understood by archaeologists to indicate a broad medieval date.

Tailor's Hall is located on Back Lane, just off High Street in the south inner city, and is accessible on foot from both Christ Church Cathedral and the old city walls at the nearby Cook Street section. The building is now managed by An Taisce, the Irish heritage organisation, and has been used as a venue and office space. Visitors approaching from High Street will pass through a neighbourhood that still carries traces of its craft and trade history in its street names. The archaeological findings are not visible at ground level, but knowing they exist changes how the building sits in its surroundings; what appears to be a relatively modest early eighteenth-century hall turns out to be one layer in a much longer sequence of use on this particular patch of Dublin ground.