BEAMINSTER teacher Valerie Goodwin, author of The Magdalen Whitewash, is to have her play staged in Dublin in November.

Mother-of-two Valerie is head of drama at Beaminster School and has been teaching for more than 25 years.

Her play tells the true story of Irish girls and women locked away behind convent walls for the remainder of their lives.

Their babies were adopted, many of them being taken to America. The last convent laundry closed in 1996 in Dublin. She said: "When I heard from my publisher, David Waters, that the Dublin theatre was going to stage my play I was flabbergasted.

"We are going to fly out to see it, but we wonder how the Irish are going to take to their history being told by an English woman! We are expecting to be tarred and feathered."

The play was performed at the Sir John Colfox School and Valerie was amazed to find in the audience the daughter of the man who was one of her main sources. Dr Finnegan wrote Do penance or Perish, a study of the Magdalen laundries in Ireland, which is the subject of Valerie's play.

Valerie added that many audience members, when the play was shown at Beaminster, remembered nuns from Catholic upbringings and several had relations or ancestors who were stigmatised for being unmarried. The recent film of a similar name was released after Valerie's play was published.

Valerie and her family intend to visit the last convent laundry in Dublin on their visit.

"We are going to go and have a look at it while we are there," said Valerie. "They won't let us in, of course, but perhaps one day they will be prepared to let the names of these poor women be remembered and honoured."

You can see Valerie's play featured on the website playsandmusicals.co.uk