St Patrick’s Tower (and pear tree), Roe Lane, Dublin 8.

Harry Warren writes:

If you are strolling along Thomas St in Dublin, walking past the St. James Gate Guinness Brewery entrance, perhaps dreaming of the halcyon days pre COVID-19 of quaffing a creamy pint, have you ever noticed that odd looking tower across the road topped with a green dome and where else in Dublin would you find a pear tree outside of a private garden?

St Patrick’s tower was built in 1757 and was and arguably is, the largest smock windmill with a revolving top in Europe, today its sails are long since gone. The tower itself is 135 feet high and the width of the base is 70 feet. A smock mill is a type of windmill that resembles the shape of the smocks, the clothing originally worn by farmers in the Netherlands where these type of windmills were first erected. Why the moniker of St. Patrick’s Tower? If you look closely at the dome the wind vane on top is an effigy of St. Patrick.

The windmill was built to grind corn for the Roe Distillery that produced in excess of two million gallons of whiskey annually. The Roe family were very successful whiskey producers, by 1887 the distillery had expanded to 17 acres making it Europe’s largest distillery. Roe Whiskey was exported to the United States, Australia, Canada, as well as all over Europe.

The wealth of the Roe family became so great that they funded £250,000 (€20 Million euros in today’s money) for a major restoration of Christ Church Cathedral. Unfortunately, by the 1920’s the worldwide global whiskey market was in serious decline and by 1949 the distillery and its grounds were finally sold off to Guinness.

The pear tree? It is located at the base of the tower and in Autumn it produces a large crop of juicy pears. Perhaps someday it will be used in the manufacture of a nice pear liquor if they ever open a new distillery here again.

Today the tower is a feature of The Digital Hub in Thomas Street, the tech and media enterprise centre. There is seating in front of the tower and it is a lovely spot to enjoy a coffee in the Autumn sunshine.

Pics by Harry Warren

Meanwhile…

Oh.

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22 thoughts on “Harry’s Dublin”

    1. Clampers Outside

      Yep, they’ve opened up in that building that always makes me think of Battersea Power Station…

      And which is why I’ve always wanted to tie a pig balloon to it, and take a pic.

      (hey, we all have funny dreams man)

  3. SOQ

    I used to live on the far side of James hospital and while walking in and out of town I used to admire some of those beautiful Guinness buildings- most of which appear to be empty.

    Diageo is the biggest private land hoarder in Dublin and when they voluntarily do the civic thing- or by CPO- and they are handed over for regeneration, lets hope those stunning buildings are all listed so that the character of the area can be retained.

  9. Harry

    Very interesting.

    Amazing that a distillery of such scale could almost be forgotten about, but there’s a lot of reasons why Irish whiskey almost became irrelevant in the face of scotch.

    Are there any images of the windmill with sails I wonder?

    1. ian-oh

      Two big factors for the decline of Irish whiskey were prohibition and our own independence. We no longer had the same access to all those UK markets, then there was the trade war with Britain as well, nearly wiped out the industry.

      Prohibition was a massive shock as well and an awful lot of unscrupulous bootleggers were making bathtub spirits like gin and cheap poitin like spirits and adding colour to them. Many were poorly made to the point of being dangerous and putting them in Irish whiskey bottles (because at that time, people preferred Irish to Scotch in the US so they went for the better known stuff.) When people started going blind or dying many were not to know it was knock off stuff so that also impacted on the reputation.

      Great to see it all being revived now though, have yet to try some Roe & Co. but should be remedying that very soon!

      Sorry if you already knew that, whiskey is a big hobby of mine (collecting and drinking).
      Anyway, no idea how accurate this is but this is an image with what the sails apparently would have been like on the windmill:

      https://www.pinterest.ie/pin/260786634658128461/

  12. Charger Salmons

    As my loyal readers will know whiskey has been this week’s theme during Charger’s nightly cocktail hour.
    Sours,Manhattans,Presbyterians.
    Tonight’s gonna be the wierdest of them all.
    A Black and Gold.
    Bushmills 10-year-old, runny honey,fresh lemon juice and one drop of sesame oil.
    It’s the drop of sesame oil in it I can’t wait to try.
    I’ll enjoy one or two watching the Ireland v Wales rugger at 6pm
    Should be a good ‘un.
    Marvellous.

  13. Harry Warren

    I love reading all of the comments especially when readers contribute new information.

    By the way I note James Lynch’s tweet “Does Harry not realise that Diageo have started distill on the site & have revived the Roe & Co brand? ”

    For clarity St Patricks Tower is sited in the Digital Hub on Thomas St and the new distillery of Roe & Co is sited in the old Guinness Power House a short stroll up the road on James St.
    Nice to see the fine old building of the power house being reused as a new distillery
    http://builtdublin.com/power-house-guinness-brewery-st-james-gate-dublin-8/

    1. Johnny

      -was trying find out if “Roe” had similar deal,1,000 year lease with free water,any idea who “owns” it,the land or freehold?
      Great photos.

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