1953 – Passenger Terminal, Carlisle Pier, Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin

Architect: Office of Public Works

carlisle_pier_entrance_lge.jpg

Recently demolished, this 1950s ferry terminal hid a Victorian railway station. The passenger terminal was designed as a temporary measure to be replaced at a later stage with a more permanent solution. The 1953 buildings wrapped around the pier. Originally trains met the ferries coming in from the UK via a railway spur from the main line. When the track was removed after the electrification of the suburban rail network in 1985, the rail bed was filled in, and the old station largely forgotten about. According to Dun Laoghaire’s long serving Harbour Master, Capt James Carter, “From the old Office of Public Works files, I once read the building was basically a steel frame, wood cladding on the inside, asbestos on the outside, with a design life of 25 years – which would have taken it up to 1979.” In fact it was used until the mid 1990s.

Sadly the original railway architecture did not survive demolition due to the undue haste of Dun Laoghaire Harbour in clearing the pier. Various schemes have been mooted for this pier over the last decade but none have come to fruition.