Sir, – Your report (“Dublin Port plans €400m development on Poolbeg peninsula”, November 18th) highlighted Dublin Port’s plans for major development works around the Poolbeg/Pigeon House area.
Pigeon House and its environs are inextricably linked with the literary and social history of Dublin. It was the site of a military fort and a cross-channel landing point in the 18th and 19th centuries while the old Pigeon House power station (1903) was the first in Europe to generate power remote from the centre of a city.
Pigeon House also appears in the writings of James Joyce and Charles Dickens. I recently drove down the Pigeon House Road and it is in a sorry state. I trust that those responsible for the planning of these developments will take care to preserve and protect what remains of the old fort walls, the harbour, and especially the Pigeon House hotel building, one of the finest examples of its kind to be found anywhere. – Yours, etc,
HENRY HUDSON,
Raheny, Dublin 5.