Catherine Scuffil is a former Dublin City Council Historian-in-Residence for The Liberties area of Dublin. A passionate historian, Catherine’s focus is the culture, history and traditions of Dublin 8 and helping people relate to the buildings, communities and streets in the area, building pride in the place where they live.
A Towering Presence
Rising above Thomas Street, and visible for miles around, St Patrick’s Tower has dominated the skyline of Dublin’s historic Liberties for more than 250 years.
It can be glimpsed from key vantage points across the city such as the Phoenix Park, Watling and Bridgefoot Street, the north quays, Liffey bridges including O’Connell Bridge and the Ha’Penny Bridge and the Guinness Storehouse. Although a Recorded Structure on the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage since May 2013, it is often an overlooked landmark.
The structure’s size represents the scale and ambition of the now, almost forgotten, multi-generational Roe family. Their distillery enterprise commenced on Thomas Street in 1757 and eventually became one of the largest Pot Still Distillers in the world.
The tower is the redundant remains of an 18th century smock windmill used as motive power for the site. It has survived the rise and fall of Dublin’s once-dominant whiskey industry, the transition from wind to steam power and the recent transformation of The Liberties into a modern cultural area.
Today, the tower remains an instantly recognisable reminder of times when wind, grain and whiskey shaped Dublin’s economy. Although no longer operational, it is a powerful local cultural symbol, appearing in paintings, prints, industrial photography, modern urban imagery and artistic interpretations of the multi-layered history of The Liberties.
It is also possibly the oldest surviving example of its kind in Europe.
Roe’s Windmill
The unique purple-brown, brick-built structure tapers from a broad base to a narrow chimney-like top and was known locally as Roe’s Windmill. An architecturally significant industrial building, it is the sole survivor of Roe’s Distillery.
Dating from 1757, its construction marked a key moment in The Liberties, linking agricultural production with urban manufacturing and export.
Roe’s Windmill was described as a “smock’ style,” the term relating to a unique tapering construction shape that closely resembled the traditional farmer’s smock of the time. This type of windmill was more commonly hexagonal or octagonal, so the circular shape of this building makes it more unique.
Seventy feet square at the base and rising to 125 feet in height, it is now crowned by a striking, copper-clad onion-shaped dome or cupola, which has weathered to a distinctive green colour, like others elsewhere in the city.
The cupola is topped by a 4ft high weathervane – an iron-cast figure of Ireland’s patron, St Patrick, bearing a mitre and crozier.
When first built, the original roof-cap of Roe’s Windmill had sails attached to catch the wind. Internally, the building housed turning mechanisms, a windshaft and brake wheel.
In the 19th century, when featured on the Dublin skyline in engravings, the windmill appeared with intact sails. There are also paintings of the building showing this original feature.
Over time, Roe’s Windmill was repurposed and restored on a number of occasions with some of the changes occurring as new machinery and sources of power became available.
The tower was extensively re-built in 1805 and at some point in the 1820s it was converted for steam-engine use. This change meant its distinctive windsails were no longer required and they were ultimately removed in the 1860s.
A family enterprise
Mid-18th century Dublin was a major centre for grain processing and distilling. The Liberties, located just outside the medieval city, had a long connection with processing the national grain harvest, resulting in many milling-related industries locating there from earliest times.
Thomas Street continued from James’s Street and was a key trade route into Dublin from the more rural hinterland. It held Dublin’s Cornmarket, as preserved in a local placename, and corn mills were documented on Watling Street and James’ Street. At this time, the city was a key market for all related productions, from corn, flour, brewing and distilling.
Roe’s Distillery on Thomas Street, commenced business in 1757, when Peter Roe purchased a small existing plant, on the north-side of Thomas Street, centred around the windmill that would become its distinctive landmark. The building was used to grind malted barley – an essential ingredient in whiskey production.
Peter’s son, Richard, ran the business from 1766 to 1794, but it struggled under the restrictions of the 1779 Distilling Act – a major reform of Irish distilling that changed how spirits were taxed and produced.
Before 1779 distillers paid duties based on the amount of spirit they produced. The Act meant they were taxed according to the capacity of their stills and regardless of actual production with the aim being to encourage continuous operation.
In 1784, a relative, Nicholas Roe, started a larger distillery nearby at School Street in Pimlico, which was also powered by a windmill. By 1802 Nicholas operated a 1121 gallon still, which was replaced in 1807 by a 1575 gallon still and swapped by 1818 for a 751-gallon option due to tax enforcement.
By the early 1800s there were two Roe distilleries operating within a short geographical distance in The Liberties.
The exact details of the relationship between Richard and Nicholas have been lost over time but the latter is thought to be either Richard’s son or cousin.
An Expanding Empire
By the early 19th century, the original Roe’s Distillery at Thomas Street had expanded significantly, necessitating the windmill’s major rebuilding in 1805. This reconstruction reflected both technological evolution and increasing industrial demand. The tower’s internal mechanisms were updated as it became part of a more complex production system including conveyors, boilers and eventually a full steam-plant.
This also marked the beginning of the windmill’s demise. As steam power became more efficient and reliable, windmills were gradually phased out. By the 1820s, the wind sails were no longer required and when removed in the 1860s their loss changed the tower’s appearance from a working windmill to a static industrial structure.
In the late 19th century, the tower acquired its copper cupola and St Patrick weathervane, the source of its modern name. Although no longer central to production, it remained a prominent symbol of its origins and scale.
With the easing of whiskey production restrictions following the 1823 Excise Act, which modernised the excess system and in turn made legal distilling more profitable, Nicholas Roe expanded his Pimlico business rapidly.
Further significant transformation was to follow under the leadership of George Roe, Richard’s grandson, who first inherited the Thomas Street distillery and then the Pimlico operation after Nicholas died in 1830.
In 1832 George leased premises at nearby Mount Brown from Hutton’s distillers and brewers and upgraded these for use as maltings, kilns and warehouses.
The premises of another Roe operation at Bonham Street were added to the growing empire in 1840 as the expanding distillery entered a period of extraordinary growth, becoming one of the largest of its kind in the world.
Its buildings expanded to involve 17-acres from Thomas Street to the Liffey quays covering multiple Dublin streets and it produced more than two million gallons of whiskey annually–twice that of Jameson across the River Liffey on Bow Street.
Roe’s Distillery, through acquisition and takeover, eventually became Dublin’s largest and most productive distilling complex, though in reputation its whiskey never matched that produced from the John Jameson or Powers Distilleries elsewhere in the city.
A pear tree was planted at the base of the now former windmill in 1850 which still bears fruit today.
Full Steam Ahead
With the progression to steam power, a 120-foot chimney stack was built behind what was then St Patrick’s Tower. This was constructed by the company’s own workmen in just under two years and was completed in 1868.
Every generation of the Roe family seemed to have been shrewd businessmen, recognising the sense of building an empire through the purchase of related or similar business or by acquiring adjacent vacant premises that made good sense to buy.
The “golden age of prosperity” of Roe’s Whiskey can be traced to 1862 when the entire operation was inherited by George Roe’s two nephews, George and Henry, the fifth generation involved in the family business.
Officially trading as George Roe and Co., to honour the founder, the distillery was commonly referred to as the Thomas Street Distillery, but this was the name of the premises rather than the legal business.
It was under George and Henry that the firm reached its zenith for which both men achieved knighthoods. At its height, the Thomas Street Distillery milled 1,500 barrels of barley a day, utilising over a mile of conveyor belts, elevator screws, five steam engines, seven 30ft by 7ft boilers with the addition of four factory chimneys to the skyline. The Roes invested solidly in the source of their fortune and the distillery was considered as one of the best equipped in Ireland and the UK.
The expansion was aided by the creation of a new firm in 1889 amalgamating three Dublin distilleries, Roe’s, William Jameson Marrowbone Lane and Dublin Whiskey Distillery Jones’s Road. The new company traded as Dublin Whiskey Distillers (DWD).
Roe’s Distillery covered a huge area for a commercial enterprise of its time, especially one in an urban setting, The buildings were pleasantly distinctive, many with ivy-covered walls surrounded by well-kept flower beds.
The distillery arched entrance-gateway from Thomas Street was most striking. It was flanked by two small pedestrian arches and the two windows above suggested that there were small offices upstairs, noted as something similar to a French chateau.
The Roe family legacy to Dublin has been significant, not least as the main benefactor to the restoration of Christ Church Cathedral and construction of the new synod hall in 1871, led by architect George Edmund Street. Henry Roe donated £250,000–an astronomical figure in those pre-inflationary times.
Challenging Times
The early 20th century brought challenges to Dublin’s whiskey industry and reliance on the then profitable export market highlighted a significant weakness in Roe’s business model.
Competition increased, particularly from Scottish blended whiskies. There were also significant trade disruptions during World War I and the final blow came in the 1920s, when prohibition closed the major United States market and devastated Dublin’s whiskey industry.
Eventually in the late 1920s, Roe’s ceased trading at Thomas Street although some related work continued under the Dublin Whiskey Distillers brand. In time, the once-thriving distillery complex fell into disuse, with the already redundant windmill becoming an isolated relic of a vanished industry. This added to a broader change in The Liberties, as much of its heavy industry declined and many connected historic structures were abandoned or repurposed.
In 1948 and 1949, the site, including St Patrick’s Tower was acquired by Arthur Guinness Son & Company to develop a new brewery printing works. By this time, the former windmill was in a poor-state of repair. Instead of demolition, Guinness opted to invest £5,000 to stabilise the structure, by carrying out repairs to the cupola and the St Patrick weathervane. In doing this the company preserved a key part of local industrial heritage.
A New Purpose
Following the decline of many of its traditional industries which centred on weaving and textiles, brewing and distilling, The Liberties underwent gradual regeneration. In 2003, the area around the tower became part of The Digital Hub enterprise campus.
Until recently, the tower was unused but remained an important visual backdrop for events such as flea markets, cultural festivals and public gatherings.
In 2026, works initiated by The Digital Hub and funded and supported by Dublin City Council, took place to convert the ground floor of the tower into an accessible exhibition and event space.
Conservation architects, archaeologists and structural engineers oversaw the works including the repointing of the lower brickwork, which was completed using a traditional technique called the penny strike.
From its origins in 1757 as a cutting-edge industrial machine to its current status as a protected landmark and cultural icon, St Patrick’s Tower has undergone a remarkable transformation.
Once essential to one of the world’s largest distilleries, it stands as a silent witness to Dublin’s industrial past. Its evolution has been captured in engravings, archival photographs, newspaper articles and contemporary art. Its image has evolved alongside its function, from working windmill to industrial relic to cultural symbol and now a popular exhibition and event space.
The Digital Hub commissioned a poem – The Angels’ Share by Annemarie Ní Churreáin – to mark the opening of the new exhibition and event space at St Patrick’s Tower. The poem takes its title from the distilling term for the portion of spirit that naturally evaporates from an oak barrel as whiskey matures. The poem is available to read here.