TradeNames:The Lawless family, over more than 50 years, has become synonymous with Dunshaughlin, writes Rose Doyle.

Dunshaughlin, against all the odds of rampant development, change and proximity to Dublin, still has what it takes to be a proper village. The main street winds gently, designer and traditional outlets jostling its length, not a parking metre in sight until, with a flourish, it re-enters Meath's green pastures.

Dunshaughlin is small-town Co Meath in all its unshakeable belief in itself, its community, past and future. No one appreciates this more than the Lawless family; their 50-year-old pub and hardware shop are pivotal to the main street and a farm keeps them firmly a part of the hinterland farming community. They are happily at the heart and core of things in Dunshaughlin.

The main street businesses, The Dublin House pub and Lawless Hardware, which began in 1956 with Jimmy and Lauri Lawless, are today in the capable hands of several of their offspring. Jimmy, a much loved figure in Dunshaughlin through the years, is just 90. Lauri, a young and young-at-heart 74, tells their story. (Her own family story, and the driving role of such as her uncle Art O'Connor in the early years of the State, is a story for another day.)

"Jimmy's family were farmers for three or four generations in Cullmullan, outside the town. Jimmy wanted to do something else so he served his time first in Gibneys in Oldcastle, where there was a fee of £60 to learn the hardware trade, and then in Shaws in Mullingar. Then his father died so he came back to run the farm. That was 1945 and he was 28."

We sit in the stylish kitchen off The Dublin House, part of the home attaching to the pub and where she and Jimmy reared their seven children. We drink tea. We eat smoked salmon. Lauri, a born multi-tasker, prepares that evening's meal and goes on talking.

"This place came on the market," she looks around with an eye seeing things as they were in the mid-1950s. "I'd met him a few months before, in my sister's pub in Batterstown; my family come from Celbridge. Jimmy said to me: 'Would you marry a publican?', and that he was trying for a pub/grocers in Dunshaughlin," she smiles, delighted at the memory, "and that's how it happened. We came here on September 2nd, 1955."

She's the youngest of 13 children herself - "all dead but me. I'd one sister I never met. Eileen was her name. She entered the convent as a nun in 1928, went to Japan in 1930 and lived there through the second World War, through the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but died a few months later. She's buried in the International Plot in Tokyo."

Lauri Lawless's story is littered with this and other fascinating asides.

"When we came to live here there was no running water," she says, "and an outside toilet. The pub was a grocery too, selling a bit of hardware out the back, nails and all that. A bottle of Guinness cost 9d and a half measure of whiskey 1/=. You could buy enough steak for two people for a week for £2.5s.0d.

"Many, many years before we came this had been a coach-house/hotel, with stables out the back, called The Dublin House. We had Seamus, our first born, on September 2nd, 1956, the anniversary of our opening! We followed with Michael in October 1957."

And followed on with Marie-Therese, Declan, Fergus, Albert and Noreen, everyone lending a hand with the business as they grew up.

Today's hardware shop, dealing in builders' supplies as well as farm yard needs, was "a building with no roof when we came here. We knocked it to the ground and built the hardware, selling household stuff, general goods. Jimmy sold everything he could. He used send me into Dublin four days a week to get certain things for people. He couldn't say no, had to get people what they wanted. He was a great man.

"We built up the hardware with our son, Seamus, when he came home from college in Blackrock. Michael looks after the hardware side of things now. We used sell china, everything you could think of! A lot of stuff for wedding presents."

They stopped selling groceries in the pub in 1972. Lauri remembers, how, before that in 1969, with troubles escalating and "troops moving into Northern Ireland, on a Sunday, August 8th, I think, all the men in the pub were fired up and wanting to go to the North to fight! Jimmy said to them: 'Will ye stay where ye are; what could ye do?', and they stayed."

Declan Lawless has been looking after The Dublin House since 1978. A gentle man, and humorous, he recalls the big snow of 1982 and how the pub became a refuge for stranded travellers.

"We had some craic! It started snowing on Friday. There was a 20ft drift down the Navan Road. The pub was full: we had to stay open two nights on the trot, with the fire lighting. Great games of cards were played through the night, fellas here from Enniskillen, Beleek, Cavan. At about 3am on Sunday morning a young fella knocked at the door, frozen hard. He'd walked from the Navan Road. We'd to look after him so's he thawed out slowly. I never saw him after."

His mother remembers: "Bodies lying everywhere asleep on the floor. We were still making soup at about five in the morning, and sandwiches, and I looked out and there were cars stopped as far as you could see!"

Things were different when they first opened the pub. "We had all the Land Commission farmers," Lauri says, "buying a few pints, a bit of hardware and groceries. All changed now. Some have given up farming, and families have branched out into other things. Fairyhouse was a great time: Easter Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were the busiest days of the year."

Declan remembers how, when they were more numerous locally, farmers made up the bulk of their customers. "They mostly stood along the bar, in their mucky boots and wellies. There's none of that now - you don't see wellies at all. You might see a farmer at the weekend. They're mostly part-time farmers now; they have to have two jobs to keep going."

The smoking ban has affected things, he says, and so have off-licences. Lauri says she's "not a bit sorry" about the smoking ban. "The air is better. My only grouch is about the parking. We'd a great passing trade but the council have ruined all that. We pay rates and we've no parking spaces outside the pub or hardware, which is terribly wrong. If we say anything we're told the rules come from Europe. They've destroyed the villages; Clane, Dunboyne. It's utterly stupid. You'd wonder where they get their brains!"

Maura O'Dwyer, a Westmeath woman who came to Dunshaughlin 40 years ago, has worked in the Lawless office as a "general dogsbody" for 27 years. New housing developments on Dunshaughlin's outskirts have made a difference, she says, "but it's still a country village. The hardware business has grown from being farm-orientated to being building-orientated but the fabric of the place has been kept intact."

She talks about the village's five pubs being modernised, restaurants added in some cases. "Our own is still a country pub, with just a few changes, new counters and seating."

Asked if the business will continue in Lawless hands, Lauri is shocked: "Oh, God, yes!" she's adamant. "Michael and myself are directors of the hardware. I'm the secretary and about all I do is sign the cheques! Marie-Therese works in the office, and Declan, of course, in the pub. Fergus, with his wife and two boys, works the farm. Seamus is in Elm Hall Golf Club in Celbridge, Albert's in London where he's contracts manager with National Power. Noreen's the baby and lives here at home and gives an occasional hand too."

She considers: "As a family, we all lend a hand."