Survey Data
Reg No
30403902
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Technical
Original Use
Railway station
Date
1895 - 1900
Coordinates
97850, 246406
Date Recorded
19/09/2008
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Complex of buildings and platforms forming railway station complex, built 1896, comprising water tower, goods shed, platforms and gate keepers house. Now disused. Recent outbuildings to site. Detached single-bay two-stage water tower to west end of central platform. Roofless, having corbelled red brick ceaves courses and overhanging cast-iron girders for water tank, latter now removed. Roughly dressed coursed limestone block walls with red brick block-and-start quoins and red brick dressings to openings. Oculus to front elevation, round-headed window opening to north side, latter with concrete sills. Round-headed door opening to front. Detached single-bay double-height goods store located to south-west of water tower, having two-bay single-storey office annex to west side elevation and set on limestone block platform. Pitched slate roofs with tooled limestone copings and having red brick chimneystack to office. Roughly dressed coursed limestone block walls with red brick block-and-start quoins and red brick dressings to openings. Oculi to upper gables. Square-headed window opening to front elvation of annex having margined rock-faced lintel, stone sill and wrought-iron bars. Square-headed door opening to same elevation having margined rock-faced lintel. Segmental-arch vehicular-width door openings to long sides of goods shed with corrugated-iron sheet doors. Detached three-bay single-storey gate keepers house to opposite side of road having projecting lean-to porch to front. Pitched slate roof with slate cat-slide to porch, concrete copings to gables, red brick chimneystack and cast-iron rainwater goods. Painted rendered coursed rubble stone walls with plinth and red brick block-and-start quoins. Camber-headed window openings having red brick voussoirs and block-and-start surrounds, tooled limestone sills and six-over-six pane timber sliding sash windows. Square-headed door opening to north side elevation of porch having tooled limestone lintel and red brick surrounds with steps.
Appraisal
Maam station, opened in 1896, is located on the Galway to Clifden line and was built by the Midlands Great Western Railway Company. It was one of the larger stations on the line and had a cattle platform to serve the local stockmen. Although the station house has been replaced by modern buildings, most of the ancillary buildings survive and retain their architectural value. The water tower is an example of a building of necessity when all trains were powered by steam and every station across had similar structures. The inclusion of a gate keeper's house demonstrates the importance of both road and rail transport in the area at that time. Its history is also intertwined with the history of the Irish State, when in the early 1920s a consignment of arms arrived at the station, intended for the Irish Volunteers. Despite its closure in 1935, this complex is of significant architectural merit and continues to define the manmade landscape.