Mrs Mooney Gets Her Close-Up

What a picture… Tom Byrne

ith the pioneering Lizzie Hawkins getting her Greystones walk of fame unveiling in November 2023, two more remarkable Greystonians’ tribute totems are hitting our train station right about now. 

Plans to transform our train station into an outdoor museum and art gallery were first announced in April 2022, and with Mary-Kate’s 45ft mural having added to all that makeover magic, the celebration of Greystones’ famous sons and daughters is now stepping up a gear.

The idea being to have nine 3-metre Corten steel totems along the station platforms, each containing a new Tom Byrne portrait of a much-loved Greystonian or one of our famous short-term residents. Each totem will have a bar code revealing a biography, explaining just why said individual is so loved, or famous. Or both.

There will be a rota system with the totems, as the profiles cover everyone from Ronnie Drew to Samuel Beckett and Eamon de Valera, and from Geraldine Fitzgerald, Michael Collins and John Millington Synge to Averil Deverell, Martin Toonder and Jack Yeats.

And with Ronnie having got his place in the sun last week, now it’s the turn of Bridie Mooney, her upcoming inclusion recently launched by organisers Ross McParland, Dermod Dwyer and Colum O’Brion alongside future totem contender, Simon Harris – plus the true brains behind the whole operation, Nikki Barrie.

These are people-powered tributes to those who left their mark on Greystones – and the fundraising for Mrs Bridie Mooney’s upcoming hometown homage is right here. Every fiver, every tenner, helps towards the €12,000 cost. And every €25 helps even more, of course.

With work already beginning on her fine tribute totem having already begun, here’s the biography that will appear with Bridie Mooney’s beautiful portrait…

If ever proof was needed as to just how loved Bridie Mooney was in Greystones, the funeral procession on Friday, September 25th 2020 from her home of over 60 years to The Holy Rosary church next door sparked a spontaneous round of applause that spread out far from Trafalgar Road, up through La Touche Place and down the town’s spine, Church Road.

There were tears too, of course, just as there had been on Christmas Eve 2015, when hundreds of people gathered outside that very same home which also happened to be a shop. Bridie was retiring, stepping out from behind the counter, and away from a family business she had started 62 years earlier alongside her husband, Robert. It was a shop that sold everything, from washing-up liquid to bags of coal, from homemade furniture to the holy grail of Mooney’s shop, sweets.

Over her six decades behind that counter, Bridie was pretty much Willy Wonka in a dress to generation after generation of children.

It meant the lady was a big part of many families’ lives, from parents to kids and on to grandkids. And for many a local, Bridie Mooney will always be a big part of Greystones.

The unveiling of Bridie Mooney’s train station tribute is Monday, September 8th at 1pm, find out more about putting art in our Dart station here, about Bridie herself here, and get involved creating these tributes by emailing here.