County: Dublin Site name: St Patrick's Tower, Digital Hub, Thomas Street, Dublin 8
Sites and Monuments Record No.: DU018-020323 Licence number: 20E0568
Author: Antoine Giacometti
Site type: Urban post-medieval
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 714260m, N 734018m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.344036, -6.284062
A small test-pit was cut into the concrete floor of St Patrick’s Tower windmill on 19 October 2020.
This windmill was originally constructed in c. 1800, probably as a tower mill, but following a fire in c. 1810 was almost completely rebuilt to its current form. It was only used as a windmill for some twenty years at most, before being converted to steam power. In the mid-20th century it became part of the Guinness complex and appears to have been converted to a store. It is currently disused. Fred Hammond has pointed out that with a base diameter of 12.4m and a height of 33.5m, it is the largest surviving windmill tower in Britain and Ireland.
The test-pit was excavated through the 20th-century concrete floor of the windmill in order to determine the survival of the original floor. The 19th-century wooden floor appears to have been removed in 1951 during renovation of the windmill. It appears that material from the demolition of the barley kilns to the immediate south-west of the windmill was used to raise the floor level and fill a cavity under the floor, which was cut into more compact earlier demolition material (possibly from the 1810 reconstruction), and a possible medieval layer. A perforated tile related to the drying of barley on the site was found in the rubble during testing. The pit was excavated to a maximum depth of 0.81m and natural subsoil was not reached.
Archaeology Plan, 32 Fitzwilliam Place Dublin 2
