LAMENT FOR MOIRA McCAVENDISH
Station.
Miriam and her grandmother shared a very special bond and she fondly remembers the many stories her grandmother told her about visits to the family living at the station house, where the woman of the house would often be cooking over the range in the small kitchen. Miriam also travelled on the train herself and can vividly recall travelling at just 6 years of age down from Dublin with her mother to Tallow Road Station.
When the Mallow to Waterford railway line was officially closed, Mairéad Lehane mentioned many times that it would be her dream to purchase Tallow Road Station and her granddaughter Miriam shared in this dream.
Though the years rolled on, Miriam’s connection to Glencairn was as strong as ever and she came on very regular visits to her relatives in Glencairn Post Office and decided to build a bungalow in the area as a holiday home. On one of her many trips down to her holiday home with her family, she saw a ‘For Sale’ sign on the site of Tallow Road Station and that was that.
Well known local builder, Dave Feeney and his team were given the challenging task of renovating the station house and converting it into a private residence, while keeping the charm and character of the original building in every way possible. The stones were marked and kept, many of the original doors were salvaged and refitted, a replica gate for the entrance was made by Dave Feeney, as was an internal half-door. The original chimneys were kept and the roof tiles were salvaged from the Bride Valley Stores in Tallow. The old freight shed was converted into a liveable space and was first put to use as a childcare facility and later as an Airbnb.
Miriam and her family moved into the house in 2004/05 and lived there for many years. Describing living in the station house as ‘a privilege’, Miriam explained that as she drove down the driveway each evening, on seeing the house come into view, she would feel a sense of safety, gratitude and grounding that was very special to her. Miriam reminisced that even walking around the gardens, she would sometimes imagine all the people who must have come into the waiting area, bought their tickets and waited for the train. “There was such a feeling of history all around,” she explained.
Miriam and her family lived in the station house until 2017 when it was sold on and it is now still in use as a private residence.
Tallow Road Station even features in this poem by English poet and former poet laureate, John Betjeman.
Through the midlands of Ireland I journeyed by diesel
And bright in the sun shone
the emerald plain; Though loud sang the birds on the thorn-bush and teasel
They could not be heard for
the sound of the train.
The roll of the railway made
musing creative:
I thought of the colleen I
soon was to see
With her wiry black hair
and grey eyes of the
native,
Sweet Moira McCavendish,
acushla machree.
Her brother's wee cabin stands distant from Tallow
A league and a half, where
the Blackwater flows, And the musk and potato,
the mint and the mallow Do grow there in beauty,
along with the rose.
'Twas smoothly we raced through the open expansion
Of rush-covered levels and
gate-lodge and gate
And the ruined demesne and
the windowless mansion Where once the oppressor
had revelled in state.
At Castletownroche, as the
prospect grew hillier, I saw the far mountains to
Moira long-known
Till I came to the valley and
townland familiar
With the Protestant church standing locked and alone.
O vein of my heart! upon
Tallow Road Station No face was to greet me, so
freckled and white; As the diesel slid out, leaving still desolation,
The McCavendish ass-cart
was nowhere in sight.
For a league and a half to
the Blackwater river I tramped with my bundle
her cabin to see
And herself by the fuchsias,
her young lips a-quiver Half-smiling, half-weeping a
welcome to me.
Och Moira McCavendish!
the fangs of the creeper Have struck at the thatch
and thrust open the door. The couch in the garden
grows ranker and deeper Than musk and potato which bloomed there before.
Flow on, you remorseless
and salmon-full waters! What care I for prospects so
silvery fair?
The heart in me's dead, like your sweetest of daughters,
And I would that my spirit
were lost on the air.