Acclaimed Irish writer Mary Lavin was commemorated when a public space near Baggot Street Bridge in Dublin was named in her honour last weekend.
Mary Lavin Place, linking Dublin’s Lad Lane to the newly restored Wilton Park, is the first public space in Ireland to be named after an Irish woman writer.
The unveiling of Mary Lavin Place, by her friend and fellow author Colm Tóibín, follows the recent announcement by Trinity College Dublin that its main library, previously the Berkeley Library which was denamed last year, is being renamed for poet Eavan Boland.
Given these developments, The Irish Times asked its readers if there were any streets, buildings, places or structures in Ireland that they thought should be named, or renamed, after women.
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By far the name that came up most often in the responses was Dr Kathleen Lynn, who was suggested multiple times as the person the new national children’s hospital should be named after.
Born in 1874 in Co Mayo, Lynn was an active suffragist and nationalist. As the Citizen Army’s chief medical officer during the Easter Rising she tended to the wounded from her post at City Hall. She was elected vice-president of the Sinn Féin executive in 1917, and a TD for Dublin in 1923, although she did not take her seat.
She is perhaps best known for her establishment of St Ultan’s Hospital for Infants on Charlemont Street in 1919.
Reader Drusilla Wynne from Co Dublin said Lynn “did so much for the sick people of Ireland, especially children”.
“She has never really been acknowledged for all the good she did throughout her life and I think to name the new children’s hospital would be a wonderful way to commemorate her and all the good she did,” Wynne said.
Deirdre Kinahan, who also suggested Kathleen Lynn, described her as a “revolutionary” and “amazing woman”.
There is a plaque in Dublin which commemorates both Lynn and her lifelong partner Madeleine ffrench-Mullen, who cofounded St Ultan’s Infants Hospital. The plaque is at 37 Charlemont Street in Dublin.
Several readers felt that Lynn’s care for children and her introduction of the BCG vaccine here merited the new children’s hospital being named in her honour.
Historian Catherine Corless was also among those suggested. Corless’s extensive research identifying records relating to the deaths of nearly 800 babies and infants at the Tuam mother and baby home led to the establishment of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes and the discovery of human remains on that site.
Corless gave the Irish people “an immeasurable gift,” reader Aisling Judge said.
“She forced us to come to terms with the truth about our past. In doing so, she helped us to grow up, to ask ourselves difficult questions about what it is to be Irish and to form a more rounded, less naive view of ourselves,” Judge said.
“Her motivation was not fame or financial gain, simply a clear sense of right and wrong, and the importance of the truth. Her actions took incredible bravery, not to mention years of painstaking work.”
Corless should be “honoured with something that will ensure her name is never forgotten”, she said.
The late Cranberries’ singer Dolores O’Riordan was suggested by another reader. Róisín Buckley, from Co Limerick, lives on Clancy’s Strand. From her house she can look across the river at King John’s Castle on Nicholas Street. Behind the castle, overlooking the river, is “a patch of grass with no name”.
“On warm days, you’ll find people relaxing on the grass, enjoying the views. In all weathers, you’ll find dog walkers, runners, teenagers, locals and a few tourists unsure if they are going the right way,” she said.
Buckley suggested naming the area after O’Riordan.
“I didn’t grow up in Limerick, and as a 90s teenager living in Carlow, the only thing I knew about Limerick was Dolores. Not King John, not St Nicholas, not any male mayors. It was Dolores and The Cranberries that meant Limerick to me,” Buckley said.
“When Dolores died, the city hall, just next to the grass patch, was where I and so many fans signed her book of condolences. My proposal is to name the grass patch around the corner from her mural, Dolores Park.”
It would be “fitting” that an area that shines on a sunny day would be named after someone who “lit up the world with her beautiful voice,” Buckley said.
Michael O’Shea, from Co Dublin, suggested an English artist, Clara Christian, who accompanied the writer George Moore when he returned to live in Dublin in 1901.
Christian lived in Tymon Lodge in Firhouse, and “immediately joined in the cultural life of her adopted city,” O’Shea said.
“She painted and gardened, assisted Hugh Lane in the campaign for a new art gallery for Dublin, and submitted paintings to the annual RHA Exhibition”.
As a friend and companion to Moore, Christian “helped inspire him to adopt a new writing style, and in Dublin he produced two of his finest works,” O’Shea said.
In 1905, she donated her painting Meditations to Lane for his planned gallery, and it remains part of the permanent collection there.
“Clara Christian was an independent and freethinking young woman. She was not a central figure in the cultural revival, but she made an important contribution to it,” O’Shea said, suggesting that she should be honoured by the naming of the pathway in Firhouse as “the Clara Christian Way”.
Among the other names suggested by readers were singer Sinéad O’Connor, writer Maeve Brennan, suffragette Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, former president Mary Robinson and athlete Sonia O’Sullivan.
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