Mary Lavin - Forgotten in Meath as capital remembers 'Tales from Bective Bridge' writer

First public place to be named after female Irish writer

On Friday of this week, IPUT Real Estate will officially unveil and open Mary Lavin Place on the south side of Dublin city, in what is believed to be the first public space to be named after an Irish female writer.

The square is to be part of the Wilton Park office development beside the Grand Canal in Dublin 2, close to Lavin's Dublin mews home at Lad Lane, which was a magnet for literary and cultural figures, as was her Abbey Farm at Bective.

The writer and novelist died, aged 83, in March 1996, and following a funeral Mass in Dunderry Church, was laid to rest in the family plot in St Mary’s Cemetery, Navan, where her first and second husbands, William Walsh and Michael McDonald Scott, are buried, along with her parents.

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. Her famous works include ‘Tales from Bective Bridge’, ‘Happiness’, and ‘In the Middle of the Fields’.

Her Abbey Farm house at Bective, overlooking Bective Abbey, since demolished, was built in the 1940s, designed by Dublin architect Brendan O’Connor, and became a destination for many visiting literary, cultural and political figures.

Sadly, since her death, her three Walsh daughters, Valdi McMahon, Caroline Walsh, and Elizabeth Peavoy have all gone before their times. Their father, Willam Walsh, was a Fine Gael Meath County Councillor, who was nominated to run in the 1954 General Election, but took ill and died during the campaign. Caroline, as literary editor of the Irish Times, was a great mentor to this writer during my college years, and Valdi and Liz were always great supporters of any publications and celebrations in Kilmessan, Bective, and Robinstown.

Lavin granddaughters include novelists Kathleen MacMahon and Alice Ryan, and journalist Tadhg Peavoy is a grandson. MacMahon said her grandmother would appreciate the irony of the naming of the square in Dublin, as she had fought tooth and nail against the original building on the site.

It is a pity that the writer has been forgotten about in Meath, where we are very bad at celebrating our modern famous figures. There was a burst of Mary Lavin commemorations around her centenary just over 10 years ago, headed by Meath County Council Library Service, but she vanished again once the focus on the Decade of Commemorations began.

She would have been a much better choice to name the new cultural centre in Trim after, as Bective is on the Boyne between Trim and Navan, and Dean Swift already has had plenty of recognition. As Bective House and Stud develops further as a hotel, it would be great to see Mary Lavin honoured on the state she grew up on, as she has been honoured in Dublin.