Survey Data
Reg No
15004151
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Artistic, Social, Technical
Previous Name
Athlone Railway Station
Original Use
Railway station
Date
1850 - 1855
Coordinates
203465, 241835
Date Recorded
08/09/2004
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Detached seventeen-bay two-storey Italianate-style railway station, built c.1851, with four breakfronts and four single-storey flanking porches. Closed in 1985 and now in use as offices and stores. Hipped, low-pitched, natural slate roof with overhanging eaves and ashlar limestone chimneystacks with heavy cornices. Constructed of snecked limestone with ashlar detailing including projecting string courses, sill course and Doric pilasters with Doric entablature over at eaves level. Square-headed openings to ground floor with timber sliding sash windows, round-headed window openings above to first floor with sliding margin sash windows and ashlar surrounds. Segmental-headed door surrounds to porches and square-headed opening to central breakfront, all with original painted timber doors. Set slightly back from road with cast-iron railings on cut limestone plinth to east and west. Platforms to interior have cast-iron shafts with foliate brackets supporting timber canopy roof. Red brick building, c.1890, to the west.
Appraisal
An attractive railway station, on a complicated but symmetrical plan, that must rank as one of the most ambitious and richly decorated railway stations in Ireland. Its architectural design and detailing is of a very high standard and it exhibits high-quality craftsmanship in the dressing and detailing of the masonry. It survives in a good condition, despite the fact that it is no longer in use as a station. It forms the centrepiece of an important complex of mid nineteenth-century railway-related structures. It was designed by J. S. Mulvany (1813-70) for the Midland and Great Western Railway Company's Dublin Broadstone to Galway line.