New Trim bridge opens to welcome visitors to Puca Festival

Trim’s new pedestrian bridge, which is yet to be named, will open to the public this Thursday, 29th October, coinciding with the first day of the Púca Festival.

The 30ft steel truss bridge was installed on 18th September and since then contractors have been completing necessary works around the bridge including paths, landscaping and seating.

It reinstates an important link to access the Porchfields from the town centre/Trim Castle and opens just in time for the Púca festival which attracts thousands of visitors to the town.

While the new bridge will open on 29th October, the official opening will not take place until 13th November before the monthly meeting of Trim MD councillors.

Its naming has been referred to the council’s civic commemoration committee with a recommendation from councillors that it should be named after a female.

This committee includes the Meath County Council Cathaoirleach, the Chief Executive Officer or a nominee and the senior executive officer in Corporate Services but they can also bring in other persons, either internal or external to the council if they wish such as the county librarian, heritage officer or conservation officer for example.

Its recommendation will go to the Corporate Policy Group, before coming back before councillors.

Names that have been mooted include Stella’s Bridge or Esther’s Bridge after Dean Jonathon Swift’s Muse Esther Johnson, Hamilton Bridge after William Rowan Hamilton, a mathematician, and Dean Richard Butler.

At the recent Trim MD meeting, Cllr Joe Fox suggested short story writer Mary Lavin who lived at Bective.

Cllr Dave Boyne had suggested Hamilton Bridge after mathematician William Rowan Hamilton but as there was a consensus that more place names should be after women, he has since revised this suggestion.

In a statement after the meeting, he said Hamilton’s contribution to engineering and maths are exactly what makes bridges like that possible - as well as GPS, 3D rendering etc.

“I know the name Esther’s bridge has been mooted, and I acknowledge the push to name more things after women, so I would respectfully ask if we could name something else after Esther - a street in the new town centre, for example.”

He is now suggesting a compromise that the bridge be named after Margaret Hamilton who was the first female engineer to work on the NASA Apollo program.

“She coined the term software engineer, she hand wrote the Apollo 11 moon landing on-board flight software and ended her career as director of the MIT Instrumentation Lab. She later received the Ada Lovelace Award for women in computing.

“Given the connection and unparalleled-parallels, I cannot think of a more appropriate, female, name. Let Esther Johnson’s street join symbolically Jonathan Swift street, but let Hamilton’s bridge symbolically span the Salmon of Knowledge.”