Site of the Railway Station

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Demolished and replaced with harbour-related buildings.

Historical information

The station was opened by the Great Northern Railway (Ireland) in 1890 at a cost of £5000. It was of brick with a platform canopy and contained a central public hall, booking office, station master’s office, refreshment room and kitchen, ladies and gentlemen’s waiting rooms, parcels’ office, and telegraphy office.

It superseded an earlier adjoining station a short distance SE at the NW corner of the old dock. This had been erected by the Newry, Warrenpoint and Rostrevor Railway Co to serve the single-track line between Newry (Bridge St) and Warrenpoint (opened in 1849). From 1877, there was also a horse-tram to Rostrevor. The Warrenpoint railway company was taken over by the GNR in 1886. The GNR station closed in 1965.

The first HMBB survey card notes: “c.1880. Derelict station premises built of yellow brick with red and blue string courses. Segmental-arched window opes are unified by continuous blue brick hood moulds. The slated roof had decorated barge boards to gables and decorated ridge tiles. The roof over platform and track is intact, steel trusses rest on granite padstones. 180ft main frontage.”

Photographs in Fitzgerald show the station to be a linear single storey yellow brick structure. Its platform and single track were covered by a single span roof resting on a yellow brick wall on the opposite side. The station building had a pitched natural slate roof with crested ridges and plain overhanging eaves carrying moulded rainwater goods with square in section downpipes. Chimneys were in yellow brick with chamfered base, bands and corbelled heads, there are four visible but may be more. Central gable to front, slightly advanced and containing the main entrance. This gable and the right gable of the main block both had ornate timber bargeboards comprising a timber frame with pierced timber panels to the apex and decorative drop finials to either side sweeping down to the eaves. The front gable was an advancing flat roofed canopy in vertical t+g timber. It had a frieze painted “WARRENPOINT STATION” and its lower part was pierced and the timbers cut into pointed finials.

Walls were in yellow brick with a chamfered basecourse, a flush red band (two bricks deep) at cill level and another at meeting rail level of the windows. Over windows was a continuous blue hood mould course in brick specials, running just above the meeting-rail band. All windows were 1/1 segmental headed sliding sashes with top sash being smaller than the bottom one. They were set in deep brick reveals, with moulded chamfers to bottom sash, and some had vertical iron bars over. The main entrance to central gable was an opening (two doors wide?) with a segmental headed transom over. To its immediate left and right were pairs of narrow windows. The remaining windows on the front elevation were in pairs or alone. Although the whole elevation is not shown, there were at least seven openings to the right of the central gable.

The right gable of the main station was at platform level and had two four-panelled doors with segmental headed transoms and brick detailing as facade. The photograph of the platform shows little of that elevation of the station, although signs show the toilets to have been at the left end. The central portion containing the way out had large timber framed windows. The slate roof over the platform and track was iron framed with t+g sarking and part-glazed. It did not cover the left bay of the station building which had a doorway. The wall opposite on which is rested was decorated with an arcade of blind openings, eleven in all, with coloured brick detailing as the main block. The end gables were t+g sheeted with points cut at the bottom of each vertical. The platform was faced in rubble stone, laid in two courses.

Primary Sources:
1. Irish Builder, 15/4/1889, p.111.
2. First HMBB survey card dated 28/11/1969.

Secondary Sources:
1. Warrenpoint Historical Group Magazine, vol.33 Spring 1999, p13-17.
3. D. Fitzgerald, ‘The Warrenpoint Branch’ (Armagh).
3. L. Bradley, ‘Warrenpoint, Origins and Developments’, (1998), pp.11, 33.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

Demolished