Uinseann MacEoin

Both of his parents were nationalists, and named all their children after leaders of the Easter Rising in 1916.

Under the first Dáil in 1918, Malachy McGuone was appointed a judge.

Uinseann MacEoin (4 July 1920 – 21 December 2007) was an Irish architect, journalist, republican campaigner and historian.

Born into an Irish republican family, MacEoin became involved with the Irish Republican Army during World War II and was interned alongside other republicans by the Irish government, who feared the IRA would draw Ireland into the war.

In the decades after his internment, MacEoin would emerge as an influential architect who became involved with the preservation of historic sections of Dublin's inner city.

Additionally, MacEoin remained interested in republicanism and would publish a number of books covering the history of Irish republicanism.

As part of his research for these books, MacEoin would conduct oral interviews with other Irish republicans and record them; these recordings now serve as the core of a massive oral history collection held by the Irish Defence Forces.

Uinseann Ó Rathaille MacEoin was born Vincent O'Rahilly McGuone in Pomeroy, County Tyrone on 4 July 1920.

His parents were Catherine (née Fox) and Malachy McGuone.

His father owned the Central Hotel in Pomeroy and was a wine and spirit merchant.

He had 3 siblings.

This resulted in him being interned the prison ship Argenta on Larne Lough from 1922 to 1923.

The family moved to Dublin after his release.

Malachy died in 1933, which led to his wife running a workingmen's café in East Essex Street.

The family later lived on Marlborough Road, Donnybrook.

The IRA was banned by the Irish government in 1936, and its bombing campaign in Britain in 1939 was viewed by the government as a threat to Irish neutrality.

As an active republican, he lived in a house on Northumberland Road from later 1939 to May 1940 where he helped in the production and distribution of an Irish Republican Army (IRA) weekly newspaper, War News.

MacEoin was among a group of republicans arrested in June 1940 and imprisoned in Arbour Hill for a year.

Once released, he was rearrested and interned at the Curragh for 3 years.

While imprisoned in the 1940s, MacEoin continued his studies by correspondence and qualified as an architect in 1945 at University College Dublin.

He was sentenced to 3-months imprisonment in October 1943 for possession of incriminating documents.

He had also been charged with possession of ammunition, but MacEoin testified he was given the rounds against his will, and never appears to have engaged in any violence.

During his internment, he was taught Irish by Máirtín Ó Cadhain and was exposed to the socialist views of his fellow inmates.

It was at this time that he adopted the Irish form of his name, Uinseann MacEoin.

His designs for a memorial garden in 1946 to those who died during the War of Independence were commended.

In 1948, he qualified in town planning, and took up a position with Michael Scott's architectural practice.

During the 1950s, he was a contributing editor on interior design in Hugh McLaughlin's magazine Creation, becoming editor of Irish Architect and Contractor in 1955.

He worked for a short time with Dublin Corporation, with their housing department, before establishing his own practice in 1955.

He married Margaret Russell in 1956 in Navan, County Meath.

They had a daughter and 2 sons.

In 1959, he designed the site in Ballyseedy, County Kerry for a monument by Yann Renard-Goulet commemorating those killed in the Civil War and members of the IRA from Kerry who died.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, MacEoin continued as an influential architectural journalist, founding and editing Build from 1965 to 1969, and later Plan.

His company, Pomeroy Press, published Plan along with other serials such as Stream and Field.

MacEoin wrote a large proportion of the copy in these periodicals, much under his own name, but he also used pseudonyms, in particular in Plan as "Michael O'Brien".

He entered into a partnership with Aidan Kelly in 1969 as MacEoin Kelly and Associates.

In the early 1970s, MacEoin designed a shopping and housing development outside Dundalk, called Ard Easmuinn.

He died in a nursing home in Shankill, County Dublin on 21 December 2007.

His estate at the time of his death was valued at over €3 million.

His son, Nuada, took over his father's architectural practice.

MacEoin attended boarding school at Blackrock College, and was then articled to the architectural practice of Vincent Kelly in Merrion Square.