Watching the world go by in Ballitore

Like her contemporary John Clare, Mary Leadbeater (nΘe Shackleton), the poet and diarist, lived her life in one locality. First seeing the light of day in Ballitore, Co Kildare in 1758, it was there, in 1826, that she died. Apart from trips to her relatives in Yorkshire and one to London, she rarely left the village. Her father ran the Quaker boarding school in Ballitore, and the liberal education he imparted and the company of pupils from differing religious and national backgrounds - including Jamaicans and Norwegians - interested her in the world beyond the shades of deepest green that was Ballitore.

But it was the passing traffic, viewed from the arched window at Griesebank, her teenage home, which developed her thirst for gossip, politics and the foibles of humanity. In 1791, she married William Leadbeater and moved to a new house in the village. Into the house wall overlooking the Market Square, Mary had built a replica of the window from which she had viewed the fleeting world at Griesebank, and whatever local news she missed in her role as first village postmistress she gathered from watching the goings-on below.

This house was to be her home for the rest of her life. Here she wrote her poetry; here she kept her diaries; and from here she corresponded with Edmund Burke. And here, the Leadbeaters and the Doyle sisters, who shared their enlarged house from 1796, suffered the violence of the 1798 rebellion. From her window, she watched houses blazing in the village streets, witnessed insurgents being shot and saw the body of her good friend, Dr Johnson, thrown over a wall following his execution. Fearing reprisals, none of the locals dared move the body for several days. All they could do was keep the pigs away.

Even in the aftermath of the rebellion, Ballitore was still unsafe. Mary's house was targeted and the Leadbeaters and Doyles held at gunpoint. And, as if all this were not enough, as the year drew to a close, Mary and William's four-year-old daughter, Jane, was severely burned in the house when her dress caught fire from a taper she was carrying to her grandmother. She died a few days later.

All of these events Mary recorded in her journal. An entry in 1799 reads: "Spring, though remarkably late, clothed the face of nature in more than wonted beauty. Alas, it could not bring to our minds the sensations of gladness which it formerly conveyed. Our hearts dwelt on the recollections that our slaughtered neighbours, our murdered friend and our departed child had been enjoying life when last the fields were green."

But there were to be happier times in the Leadbeater household, and each unusual visitor to the village, including a camel, was faithfully recorded until the year before her death. When she died, her coffin was carried first to the Meeting House, then along the green road to the Quaker Burial Ground, where she lies beneath an unadorned stone. Beside her lie William and Jane.

If the burial ground is overgrown, then the house is full of life. Recently reopened as a library, it will soon house a museum, too. From the garden at the back, a bronze figure of Mary watches and, doubtless, from the arched window overlooking the Square a less tangible Mary notes those who come and go.

Mary Leadbeater's house is in the Square, Ballitore, Co Kildare, just off the N9 between Kilcullen and Castledermot. The house will open to the public this autumn.