placenamesDonabate
Domhnach Bat
The local village centre preserves a railway station and its associated house, while road works have exposed more modest evidence of earlier surfaces and drainage.
The name
These Irish name elements are associated with this record in the Logainm glossary.
An element’s translation is a clue, rather than a complete explanation of the name. Its form and meaning depend on local history and the full Irish name.
Recorded forms
- Domhnach Bat · Irish · main form · validated name
- Donabate · English · main form
Place & story
The red-brick station
Donabate’s station building is dated by the architectural inventory to about 1860. Its long, single-storey red-brick front has eight bays, with a gabled entrance porch breaking the roofline. Granite window sills, carved timber bargeboards and a slate roof provide contrasting materials and details. The inventory records a remodelling of its interior around 1995; the date assigned to the surviving building should be distinguished from the railway’s original opening. [2]
A house beside the railway
A separate stationmaster’s house on Turvey Avenue reflects another stage in the railway’s development. The inventory dates its two-storey, red-brick core to about 1890, with a rear return and a substantial rear extension added around 1999. Flemish-bond brickwork, limestone window sills and terracotta roof details distinguish the house. Together, the dwelling and the lower station building show how accommodation and passenger facilities acquired different architectural forms. [3]
Cobbles and a slab-built drain
Testing for the Portrane–Donabate broadband project in March 2007 examined road trenches near the village’s Anglican church. One trench, among three approximately fifty metres north of the church, exposed a rough cobbled surface above a box drain made from flat and upright slabs. The report did not identify archaeological features or finds in the tested and monitored works. This limited investigation therefore supplies evidence of earlier road construction without establishing a medieval date for it. [4]
Geographic information
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Donabate. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Donabate Railway Station:11336015 · National Inventory of Architectural Heritage
- Donabate stationmaster’s house:11336018 · National Inventory of Architectural Heritage
- 2007:459 Donabate · Dominic Delany, Excavations.ie
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2024-06-28. How this page was prepared.