Survey Data
Reg No
31207015
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Historical, Social
Original Use
Station master's house
In Use As
House
Date
1890 - 1900
Coordinates
137381, 299851
Date Recorded
04/11/2010
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Detached four-bay single-storey railway station master's house with half-dormer attic, opened 1895; extant 1895, on a H-shaped plan with single-bay full-height (north-east) or single-bay single-storey (south-west) gabled projecting end bays. Closed, 1975. Renovated to accommodate continued private residential use. Pitched slate roofs on a H-shaped plan with roll moulded clay ridge tiles, cement rendered chimney stacks having concrete capping supporting terracotta pots, quatrefoil-detailed decorative timber bargeboards to gables on timber purlins, and replacement uPVC rainwater goods on decorative timber eaves boards on rendered eaves retaining cast-iron downpipes. Roughcast walls bellcast over rendered plinth with drag edged tooled cut-limestone flush quoins to corners. Square-headed window openings with drag edged dragged cut-limestone sills, and cut-limestone[?] block-and-start surrounds framing replacement uPVC casement windows replacing two-over-two timber sash windows. Set in unkempt grounds.
Appraisal
A railway station master's house identified as an integral component of the late nineteenth-century built heritage of Swinford on account of the connections with the development of the Waterford, Limerick and Western Railway (WLWR) line by the Waterford, Limerick and Western Railway (WLWR) Compact, the so-called "Burma Road" opened (1895) in response to Arthur James Balfour's Light Railways (Ireland) Act, 1889. Having been reasonably well maintained, the elementary form and massing survive intact together with quantities of the original fabric: the introduction of replacement fittings to most of the openings, however, has not had a beneficial impact on the external expression or integrity of a railway station master's house recalling the contemporary railway station masters' houses at Kiltimagh (1895; see 31210014) and Ballindine (1893; see 31311201).