Survey Data
Reg No
40401512
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Artistic, Social
Previous Name
Ballyhaise Junction Railway Station
Original Use
Railway station
In Use As
House
Date
1880 - 1890
Coordinates
242388, 314929
Date Recorded
10/06/2012
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Detached single-storey former train station, built 1885, with gable-fronted former ticket room to south bay, glazed addition to former hall in centre portion, single-storey extension to rear, single-storey extension to north behind historic banded brickwork screen wall. Now in use as private house. Pitched slate roof, decorative clay ridge tiles with trefoil motifs, recent pressed metal rainwater goods and brick chimneystacks, original chimneystacks were larger and of red brick with stepped widening to top. Oversailing roof with timber barge and eaves boards, decorative timber hammer-beam truss motifs proud of gables supported on timber wall brackets, timber finials on gables. Red brick walls with yellow and vitrified brick bands, vitrified brick string course above windows, yellow block-and-start brickwork to corners, yellow brick plinth throughout. Rendered south and rear elevations. Triple round-arched window openings to south-east gable, paired segmental-headed windows to north bay, all with replacement windows. Large glazed screen to former hall with entrance bay. Recent door inserted in screen to north. Round-arched timber sash in south-west gable with margin panes. Two widened square-headed openings to south side. Opens to former platform to front having rubble stone retaining wall to former track bed and square granite edge coping.
Appraisal
Ballyhaise Junction Railway Station was part of the Great Northern Railway on the Clones to Cavan branch that opened in 1885 and formed a junction for the Belturbet branch of the line. The complex once comprised three platforms, one of which was an island reached by a lattice metal pedestrian bridge, a station building, a station master’s house and goods shed to the south-east on the opposite side of the line. The network closed in 1957 to passengers and in 1959 to goods. Today a road has replaced the railway tracks. The building is an excellent example of GNR station architecture executed in red brick and precedes the yellow brick style used by William Hemingway Mills (1834-1918), chief engineer of the GNR from 1876 to 1910. Ballyhaise Junction is a well-composed picturesque structure typical of nineteenth century railway companies and, together with the adjacent former station master's house, is reminder of the scale of the rail network in the past.