Dublin square to be named after 'Tales from Bective Bridge' writer
Mary Lavin to be commemorated on 25th anniversary of death
The famed Irish short story writer, Mary Lavin, who lived at Bective, will today become the first female Irish writer to have a square named after her, close to her former mews home in Dublin city centre.
The ‘Tales from Bective Bridge’ writer died 25 years ago this week.
American born Mary Lavin came to Bective when her father, Tom Lavin returned to Ireland from Boston to work as estate manager at Bective House outside Navan. She was to become one of the best known Irish writers of her generation, living at the Abbey Farm overlooking Bective Abbey. Mary Lavin’s stories received numerous international awards, including the Guggenheim Fellowship and the Katherine Mansfield Prize, and many first appeared in the prestigious New Yorker.
She was named Meath Personality of the Year by the Royal Meath Association in 1975. Lavin married twice, initially to William Walsh, father of her three daughters, Elizabeth, Valdi and Caroline, all since sadly deceased, and secondly, to Michael McDonald Scott after she was widowed as a young mother. Her latter years were spent mainly at her mews near the Grand Canal in Dublin 2. When she died in 1996, she was laid to rest in the Lavin-Walsh family burial plot at St Mary’s Cemetery, Navan.
A granddaughter, former RTE reporter Kathleen MacMahon, followed in her footsteps, becoming a publishing sensation with her debut novel ‘This Is How It Ends’.
Her Abbey Farm house at Bective, overlooking Bective Abbey, since demolished, was built in the 1940s, designed by Dublin architect Brendan O’Connor. The Abbey Farm became a destination for many visiting literary, cultural and political figures who called to Mary Lavin and the Walshes, and later Mary and Michael McDonald Scott .
She also had a Dublin mews at Lad Lane, and Mary Lavin Place will link Lad Lane, to Wilton Park. A naming ceremony today will coincide with the 25th anniversary of Lavin’s death in 1996, aged 83.
Mary Lavin’s famous works include ‘Tales from Bective Bridge’, ‘Happiness’, and ‘In the Middle of the Fields’.
Kathleen McMahon, whose third novel, ‘Nothing But Blue Sky’ is nominated for the Woman’s Prize for Fiction’ paid tribute to her grandmother on RTE’s ‘Morning Ireland’ this morning.