The Poolbeg Chimneys: How Two Striped Towers Became Dublin's Favourite Landmark
They have no official protected status. There's no viewing platform, no visitor centre, no gift shop at the bottom. By any normal measure they're industrial leftovers, two decommissioned power station chimneys on a spit of reclaimed land in Dublin Bay. And yet, ask anyone flying home into Dublin Airport what they look for from the plane window, and you'll get the same answer: the Poolbeg Chimneys. The moment you see those red and white stripes, you're home.
Why is it called the Pigeon House?
Long before the chimneys, the Poolbeg peninsula was home to a harbour wall and a storehouse looked after by a caretaker named John Pidgeon. In the 1760s, Pidgeon and his family turned their blockhouse into a refreshment stop for travellers arriving and departing by packet boat, and it became one of the most fashionable day trips in Georgian Dublin. "Pidgeon's House" outlived the man himself: the name stuck to the hotel that followed, then the fort, then the power stations. Two and a half centuries later, Dubliners still call the whole area the Pigeon House.
From power station to icon
The chimneys themselves are younger than most people think. The Poolbeg Generating Station's two great stacks went up in 1971 and 1978, and at over 200 metres they remain among the tallest structures in Ireland. The station was decommissioned in 2010, and for a while the chimneys' future looked genuinely uncertain, until public outcry made it clear that Dublin would not be Dublin without them. They were made safe and preserved, saved not by planners but by affection.
The repaint: pride restored
By the 2020s the famous stripes had faded to a chalky ghost of themselves. In August 2024, ESB began the chimneys' first proper repaint in decades as part of a major maintenance programme, and today they burst over Dublin Bay in fresh red and white again. The pride is well and truly restored; on a clear day you can see them gleaming from Howth to Killiney.
How the chimneys became our first ever design
Due South exists because of these towers. Paul drove past them every single day on his way to work and one day the idea sparked: draw them, print them on a tee, bring them alive. That sketch became the first ever Due South design. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive. People stopped him to ask where the shirt was from, and it proved something we'd only hoped: there was a real appetite for proper Irish landmark and lifestyle design, made here, honest and without the usual frills.
That first version looked a little different to the one you know now. It was a single white line drawing, nothing more, printed on a heather blue tee. The year after, we decided the chimneys had to have their red. It felt like a small change at the time, but that splash of colour is what made the design, and it has been one of our best sellers every year since.
See the Poolbeg Chimneys tee →
Years and many print runs later, the Poolbeg Chimneys t-shirt, now in dark heather blue, is joined by the Poolbeg hoodie, the organic cotton sweater and even Poolbeg socks. Every one is hand screen-printed in our Dublin and Wexford studios on 100% organic cotton, and lasts hundreds of washes.
The lighthouse at the end of the wall
Walk out past the chimneys along the Great South Wall and you come to the other half of the story: the Poolbeg Lighthouse, the little red one at the very end, standing in the middle of the bay since the 1760s. It is the same walk Dubliners have been doing for two hundred years, and the view back at the chimneys from the end of it is the best in the city. We drew the lighthouse too.
See the Poolbeg Lighthouse tee → or the Poolbeg Lighthouse socks.
And the whole skyline
If you'd rather have the full picture, the Dublin Skyline tee takes in the city from the bay, and yes, the two red chimneys are in there. They are the first thing most people spot.
If the chimneys are your homecoming landmark too, you know exactly why we drew them. And if you're looking for a gift for someone who misses that view from the plane window, we'd humbly suggest you've found it.
Explore more Dublin designs: the Ha'Penny Bridge tee and the Dublin Landmarks socks, or browse our Irish gift guides.