Pigeon House Fort — Unknown Townland

According to De Courcy (1996, 299) a blockhouse was built in 1760 in the Pigeon house precinct. This was used for the storage of tools and materials and as a repository for flotsam and jetsam claimed by the Corporation. J. Sadler's artistic depiction of the strongly fortified Pigeon House Fort and Barracks c.1824 which was situated half way between Ringsend and the Poolbeg Lighthouse. Adjacent to the fort there was a 900 feet x 450 feet harbour basin originally intended for a mail packet station, which declined in importance when Howth and Dun Laoghaire harbours were built. The various constituent elements of the fort complex, including soldiers’ quarters, stores, magazines, a hospital, a canteen, a handball alley, a prison, water tanks, defensive gateways at each end of the South Wall protected by trenches and drawbridges, an armoury and guardhouse commanding the road from Ringsend, and guns trained on the South Bull sands and the mouth of the Liffey (Giacometti 2009, 2). In 1835 the Pigeon House was described as; 'the South-wall-which was erected for the purpose of securing the harbour against the sands of the South-bull. The building of this wall was commenced in 1748, and is constructed of large blocks of granite, strongly cemented, and fastened together with iron cramps . It runs in a straight line into the sea the astonishing length of 17,754 feet, or nearly three and a half English miles. About midway on this wall, a fort or battery has been constructed, called the Pigeon house The Pier at this point is 250 feet wide, and on it are built a Magazine, Arsenal, and Custom-house. It is considered a place of great strength being surrounded with heavy cannon, and commanding the Bay in various directions. There is always a large detachment of artillery stationed here, for whose accommodation a barrack has been erected. At this place there is also a Basin, for Packets and other vessels of a similar description, 900 feet in length, and 450 in breadth; but since the formation of the harbours of Howth and Kingstown it has been but little frequented' (Curry 1835, 6). Kerrigan (1995, 176-8) described this fortification as follows; 'Two other elements in the line of coastal defence in Dublin Bay were the Pigeon House Fort and the nearby Half Moon or Five Gun battery [DU019-028----]. The Pigeon House, a small harbour and hotel on the South Wall of Dublin Harbour, was established as a military post shortly before the outbreak of the 1798 Rising. It was intended to serve as a citadel for Dublin and as a refuge, with its own harbour for the Dublin administration and garrison. Military reports earlier in the eighteenth century had stressed the need for a citadel, with Ringsend as a suggested site: the establishment of the Pigeon House Fort followed on the same principle of an isolated strong-point with its own harbour. At a distance of one-and-a-half miles from Ringsend, the South Wall curved northwards some 400 feet and then continued eastwards to the Poolbeg lighthouse. On the north side, within the space of this quadrant, was the small harbour known as Pigeon House Basin. The South Wall was evidently extended southwards and eastwards some 200 feet here to provide space for the military buildings of the Pigeon House Fort, several of which still remain; parts of the perimeter wall or rampart on the west and south still survive. The sea originally came up to the wall at high tide, but in recent years there has been extensive land reclamation here. A large power station has been built over the eastern part of the site, replacing most of the military structures. Entrance to the fort on the west was by means of a drawbridge, which was at the position where the present road enters the fort. Immediately to the north is a gun embrasure, the gun platform some feet above the general ground level. South of the drawbridge were two more gun-embrasures in a length of wall now demolished: the south corner of this part of the west front ended in a triangular salient, loopholed for musketry, which no longer survives The loops in the northern face flanked this advanced part of the west front and the drawbridge. The perimeter of the fort ran eastwards from the musketry salient for a distance of some 40 feet, then southwards about 145 feet. This north-south length of wall survives, with two arched gun-embrasures of regular masonry in the northern section. The guns were placed on the rampart, approached by steps from the interior of the fort; like those in the advanced part of the west front at the fort entrance, they had a field of fire westwards over the approach from Dublin. Of the south wall of the fort about half survives, a length of some 400 feet. Farther east the road crosses the site of the wall; to the east of the road a length of the south wall with three arched gun-embrasures was recently demolished in the mid-1980s. From this eastern end of the south wall the perimeter of the fort ran northeast and then northwards to the junction with the eastern extension of the South Wall. The entrance to the fort here was by means of a drawbridge and through the passageway of a two storey gatehouse. North of the gatehouse on the rampart were three guns on traversing platforms, two front-pivoted and the northernmost gun rear-pivoted in a circular emplacement at the northern corner of the fort. These guns had a field of fire to the east and northeast, commanding the harbour wall and the approach of shipping sailing upstream. To the south of the gatehouse were a large magazine and stores. An element of the fort that survives is a wall forming the southern and eastern perimeter of the Pigeon House Basin, where musketry loops in the wall commanded the harbour. In June 1804 there was a detachment of thirty-five artillerymen in a new ordnance barrack and sixty soldiers in a large house in the eastern part of the fort. Another large house was occupied by officers and civilians, and there was a magazine and naval storehouses and a bombproof capable of accommodating 200 soldiers in an emergency; this must have been a vaulted structure of masonry or brickwork to resist shellfire. The guns were seven 24-pounders, three on traversing platforms; one 18-pounder, three 12-pounders and one howitzer on garrison carriages; and four 12-pounders, two 6-pounders and two howitzers on field carriages. There were in addition eight mortars. A parapet had recently been added to several parts of the fort and a stable built for fourteen horses. A plan of the Pigeon House Fort, with the addition of a much larger proposed fort, drawn to accompany a report of a committee of Royal Engineers in Ireland of November 1805, indicates the outline of the fort much as it appears on later plans. The large bow-fronted house that survives today at the south-east angle of the fort is shown, with a number of other buildings, including the magazine and stores behind the east rampart. The proposed new fort was on a much larger scale, enclosing the existing fort and extending eastwards about 1,000 feet and a similar distance southwards from the eastern part of the South Wall. The area enclosed by this new work would have been over six times the area of the Pigeon House Fort, involving expensive construction over the strand to the south and east. Two demi-bastions flanked the approach from Dublin, with entry across a ravelin sited between them. This proposed west front of the new work was some 500 feet to the west of the existing fort entrance. While the ambitious plan to extend the Pigeon House Fort did not go ahead, it appears that work continued over the next decade to improve the defences and the accommodation. Weston St John Joyce, in The Neighbourhood of Dublin (1921), states that the Pigeon House Fort cost over £100,000 and that construction started in 1813; but while extensive works may have been in progress in that year the place had been a military post since 1798, and it is evident that by 1804 there we