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Tag Archives: Ulster


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The Battle of Moyry Pass

The Battle of Moyry Pass begins on September 20, 1600, ending on October 9, in counties Armagh and Louth, in the north of Ireland, during the Nine Years’ War. It is the first significant engagement of forces following the cessation of arms agreed in the previous year between the Irish leader Hugh O’Neill and the English Crown commander, Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex.

The battle is fought by the armies of O’Neill and Charles Blount, 8th Baron Mountjoy, a follower of the late Earl of Essex. Mountjoy is determined to pierce O’Neill’s heartland in central and western Ulster by the Moyry Pass. In the course of the two-week assault the English troops establish a garrison near Armagh, taking heavy casualties, and Mountjoy retires with difficulty to Dundalk.

Mountjoy’s strategy for putting down O’Neill’s rebellion is gradually to constrict his territory in Ulster with a ring of fortified garrisons on the borders. To this end, he lands seaborne forces at Derry in the north of the province and at Carrickfergus in the east of Ulster. In September 1600, Mountjoy moves north from Dublin and concentrates at Dundalk in order to mount an expedition further into Ulster and re-establish a garrison at Armagh, which position had been evacuated by the English Crown forces after O’Neill’s victory at the Battle of the Yellow Ford in 1598.

On September 17, 1600, Mountjoy sets out from Dundalk, intending to march to Newry and then on to Armagh. The Moyry Pass (or “Gap of the North”) is the sole point of entry to Ulster as much of the terrain is wooded and mountainous, and it has been well fortified by O’Neill with trenches and barricades. There are three lines of trenches, barricaded with earth and stone, and on the flanks the Irish have made further earth and stone works and “plashed” (twisted) the branches of low-growing trees in order to provide cover for themselves and prevent the English occupying the heights on either side of the Pass.

The English reach the pass on September 20 and set up camp just outside, to the south on Faughart Hill. Taking advantage of a misty day on the 25th, an officer named Thomas Williams (who had commanded the Blackwater Fort during the Battle of the Yellow Ford) makes a sortie into the pass. After heavy fighting he identifies the Irish defence works and returns to the English camp with 12 dead and 30 wounded. For six days heavy rain holds up the fighting, until the weather clears on October 2. The weather is important because the matchlock muskets of the day do not work in wet conditions. On October 2, Sir Samuel Bagnall leads his regiment of infantry into the Pass at the head of four other regiments. The English breach the first barricade, and Thomas Bourke’s regiment leads the way to the second and third lines of defence. The English take the second line only to find themselves in a trap, with gunfire concentrated from three sides. They try to dislodge the Irish from their remaining positions for three more hours before retreating, with the Irish in close pursuit. The English admit 46 killed and 120 wounded, but it is thought that they understated their losses throughout the campaign.

On October 5, Mountjoy sends two regiments on a flanking march over the hill to the west, with one further regiment supported by horsemen advancing up the centre of the Pass. No significant gains are made, and the regiments turn back, reporting casualties of 50 dead and 200 wounded.

By October 9 the privy councilor Geoffrey Fenton complains, “we are now but where we were in the beginning.” Mountjoy retires to Dundalk on either October 8 or 9, but on October 14 word reaches the English camp that O’Neill has abandoned the Pass and retreated to a crannog stronghold at Lough Lurcan. The most likely explanation for O’Neill’s withdrawal from his position of strength is that he is short of ammunition and food and fears a flanking attack on his rear from Newry.

Mountjoy occupies the Moyry Pass on October 17 and dismantles O’Neill’s earthworks. He marches on to Carrickban, just outside Newry, and by Sunday, November 2, sets up camp at Mountnorris, halfway between Newry and Armagh. There he builds an earthwork fort and leaves a garrison of 400 men under the command of Captain Edward Blaney. He then marches back to Dundalk via Carlingford, but is attacked on November 13 by O’Neill, close to the Fathom Pass. Mountjoys men force their way through, and the Lord Deputy claims the army lost 15–20 killed and 60–80 wounded, but a later report suggests the losses are much heavier, with 80 killed.

The battle of Moyry Pass is a stalemate as Mountjoy cannot take the Pass and O’Neill cannot keep it. Mountjoy does establish a garrison at Mountnorris, but has to retire to Dundalk after taking substantial casualties. Mountjoy claims his force lost only 200 men killed and 400 wounded in the fighting from September 20 to November 13, though this may be a considerable underestimate. More, he says, died of disease. The Irish casualties are given by the English as an incredible 900–1,200 killed and wounded, but this is questionable given that the Irish were in a strong defensive position of their own choosing, behind the protection of fieldworks. These figures probably say more about what Mountjoy wanted Queen Elizabeth I to hear than about the actual casualty figures. The following year Mountjoy builds Moyry Castle to secure the pass.

(Pictured: View of the entrance to the Moyry Pass looking north from Faghart Hill)


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Birth of Janet McNeill, Novelist & Playwright

Janet McNeill, prolific Irish novelist and playwright, is born on September 14, 1907, in Dublin. Author of more than 20 children’s books, as well as adult novels, plays, and two opera libretti, she is best known for her children’s comic fantasy series My Friend Specs McCann.

McNeill is born to Rev. William McNeill, a minister at Adelaide Road Presbyterian Church, and Jeannie Patterson (Hogg) McNeill. In 1913, the family moves to Birkenhead, Merseyside, England, where her father becomes minister at Trinity Road Church. She attends public school in Birkenhead and studies classics at the University of St. Andrews in St. Andrews, Scotland, completing a MA degree in 1929. While at university, she is involved in writing and acting with the College Players. In 1924, the family returns to Ireland due to her father’s failing health, and Rev. McNeill becomes the minister of a village church in Rostrevor, County Down, Northern Ireland, while Janet joins the Belfast Telegraph as a secretary.

In 1933, McNeill marries Robert Alexander, the chief engineer in the Belfast city surveyor’s department, and the couple settles in Lisburn, where they raise their four sons. One son is the zoologist Professor Robert McNeill Alexander, CBE, FRS. Though she plans to write her first novel early on, she finds it impossible to write seriously until the children grow up, saying, “It was four years before I had a baby and twenty-five before I produced the book.”

In 1946, McNeill wins a prize in a BBC competition for her play Gospel Truth. She begins writing radio dramas, which are broadcast by the BBC. She suffers an intracerebral hemorrhage in 1953. During her recovery, she begins writing novels both for adults and children, producing a large body of work between 1955 and 1964. Her popular children’s character, Specs McCann, who debuts in a 1955 book and makes several reappearances, also inspires a newspaper cartoon strip by Rowel Friers, a Belfast artist and friend of hers.

Her 1944 novel The Maiden Dinosaur is her first to be published in the United States, twenty-two years later. She also has three writing credits on television with series and plays. Several of her plays are staged at the Ulster Group Theatre.

In 1964, McNeill’s husband retires, and the couple moves to Bristol, South West England. She writes one more novel after she leaves Northern Ireland but continues to write children’s books for another decade. During this time, she writes her only children’s play, published as Switch On, Switch Off, and other plays (1968), which presents different moral themes in scenes set in “domestic and workplace settings in contemporary England.” Her children’s book The Battle of St. George Without is televised by the BBC in 1969.

In her adult fiction, McNeill focuses on the lifestyle and social mores of Belfast and Ulster in the mid-twentieth century. Her characters are primarily “menopausal, middle-aged, middle-class Protestants.” She depicts the “dreary, Ulster religiosity” of ministers and laymen alike, and the class conventions and sexual repression of middle-aged, upper-middle-class women. The theme of suppressing self-identity and goals, both by wives in deference to their husbands and parents on behalf of their children, pervades her adult novels.

McNeill has a number of health problems and dies in Bristol in October 1994.


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Birth of Alexander Campbell, Ulster Scots Minister

Alexander Campbell, an Ulster Scots immigrant who becomes an ordained minister in the United States, is born on September 12, 1788, near Ballymena, in the parish of Broughshane, County Antrim.

Campbell is the eldest son of Thomas Campbell and Jane Campbell (née Corneigle), who marry in 1787 and later have four daughters and two younger sons. His father, the son of soldier Archibald Campbell and his wife Alice McNally, is born on February 1, 1763, at Sheepbridge, near Newry, County Down. The Presbyterian minister William Campbell may have been a relation.

Archibald Campbell is born Catholic but joins the Church of Ireland, while his son joins the seceding branch of the Presbyterian church and studies at the University of Glasgow, graduating with a Master of Arts degree in 1786, although he does not appear in the published records of the university. He becomes a teacher but is determined to become a minister, and studies in the Anti-Burgher Divinity Hall in Whitburn, West Lothian (or the Seceder Theological Seminary in Whithorn, Wigtownshire, according to another source) for two months each year for five years. He is ordained a minister in the seceding congregation of Ahorey, County Armagh, probably in 1798. Although at first a member of the Anti-Burgher party in his church, Thomas Campbell begins to believe that divisions between and within denominations are prejudicial to true Christianity. He writes a report in 1804 suggesting that Burgher and Anti-Burgher Presbyterians in Ireland should unite. When this is vetoed in 1805 by the General Associate Synod of Scotland, Thomas Campbell, then moderator of the Irish Seceding Synod, initiates an unsuccessful move to seek independence from Scottish control. His experiences with church authorities undoubtedly increase his belief in the need to rediscover the scriptural basis of religion, freed from man-made creeds.

In 1804, Thomas Campbell sets up an academy at Richhill, County Armagh. In 1798, he is one of the founders of the Evangelical Society of Ulster in which clergymen from differing sects cooperate but resigns when this enterprise is frowned on by seceding authorities.

In poor health in 1806, Thomas Campbell resigns from Ahorey, and goes to the United States in 1807, where he preaches in small congregations around Washington, Pennsylvania. He is soon accused of doctrinal unsoundness, of disciplinary laxity and of administering the sacraments to non-Presbyterians. His appeal to the Associate Synod of North America is unsuccessful, and in 1809 he ceases to be a minister of the seceder church. His liberal views on Christian unity and on the paramount importance of the Bible attract supporters, and in 1809 they found the Christian Association of Washington. He publishes a declaration and address in which he sets out the principles of this body. His followers claim it represents a “second reformation” or a “restoration.” It forms the basis of the doctrine of what becomes America’s most important indigenous religious development, and is regarded as significant in the history of the wider ecumenical movement. He publishes a great many other tracts and articles. Thomas Campbell dies in Bethany, West Virginia, on January 4, 1854.

Thomas had married Jane Corneigle in 1787 and their eldest son Alexander is born on September 12, 1788, in Broughshane, County Antrim, where his father is teaching. His parents intend him for the ministry, and he receives a good education, partly from his father, and religious training from both parents. He is greatly influenced by his strongminded and pious mother. In October 1808 his family sets sail for America to join his father. The ship is wrecked on the island of Islay, off Scotland. All on board are saved, partly thanks to Alexander’s strength and leadership. Rather than continuing the voyage by other means, Alexander spends eight months in the University of Glasgow to prepare himself for the ministry.

In the summer of 1809, the family finally arrives in Pennsylvania, among many emigrants from Ulster. On January 1, 1812, Campbell is ordained as a minister by his father’s Brush Run Church, and quickly takes over the leadership of the fledgling church. By 1812, most of their followers, thenceforth often called Campbellites, have undergone baptism by immersion; a union with the Baptist denomination results, but does not survive after 1830, by which date Campbell’s work on a translation of the Greek New Testament has convinced him that baptism is unscriptural. Controversy between the two groups continues for many years.

A very able preacher and debater, whose public discussions attract much attention, Campbell attacks the creeds and governance of established churches. In 1823, he founds the journal the Christian Baptist. Subsequently in 1830, after the break with the Baptists, he starts the Millennial Harbinger. Both periodicals are largely written by Campbell and his father, Thomas, and are widely influential. He is convinced that church unity will usher in a millennial age of peace and harmony. Primitive Christianity is thus to bring about a utopian future. His book Christianity Restored (1835) is widely read, in Britain as well as in the United States. In 1826, a translation of the Greek New Testament is printed by Campbell’s press in Bethany, West Virginia. Largely based on recent translations by others, it nonetheless contains variant readings by Campbell and furthers his aim of providing followers with authoritative texts on which to base their beliefs. In 1841, he founds Bethany College, West Virginia, and is its president until his death in Bethany on March 4, 1866, when he leaves it $10,000 and a large library.

In 1832, several fledgling churches join the Campbellites, and form a new body called the Christian Church, or Disciples of Christ, which today has over 3,000 congregations in the United States. The two guiding principles of the lifelong beliefs of the Campbells are in the end irreconcilable. An emphasis on the literal interpretation of scripture allows believers to form beliefs at variance from those of co-religionists, and neither Alexander Campbell’s great authority in the denomination nor Thomas Campbell’s emphasis on the need for church unity are enough to prevent the fissions inevitable in a church that so strongly opposes man-made creeds. There are now at least six major divisions of the Church of Christ, one of several alternative names.

On March 2, 1811, Campbell marries Margaret Brown, and thenceforth derives his income from the large farm that had belonged to her family. They have eight children, who all die in their father’s lifetime. Margaret Brown Campbell dies on October 22, 1827. On July 31, 1828, in fulfilment of his wife’s dying request, the widower marries the English-born Selina Huntington Bakewell, and has six children with her. Four of those children survive him. Selina Campbell writes a memoir of her husband, published in 1882, and lives until 1897.

(From: “Campbell, Alexander” by Linde Lunney, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, last revised May 2021)


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The Battle of Collooney

The Battle of Collooney, also called the Battle of Carricknagat, occurs on September 5, 1798, during the Irish Rebellion of 1798 when a combined force of French troops and Irish rebels defeat a force of British troops outside of Collooney near Sligo.

A long-anticipated French landing to assist the Irish rebellion takes place on August 22, when almost 1,100 troops under the command of General Jean Joseph Amable Humbert land at Kilcummin Strand (Cill Chuimín), Killala Bay, County Mayo. Although the force is small, the remote location ensures an unopposed landing away from the tens of thousands of British soldiers concentrated in the east in Leinster, engaged in mopping up operations against remaining pockets of rebels. The nearby town of Killala is quickly captured after a brief resistance by local yeomen and Ballina is also taken two days later, following the rout of a force of cavalry sent from the town to oppose their march. Irish volunteers begin to trickle into the French camp from all over Mayo following the news of the French landing.

The victory of General Humbert at Castlebar, despite gaining him about 5,000 Irish recruits, does not lead to a renewed outbreak of the rebellion as hoped. A British army of some 26,000 men is assembled under Field Marshal Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis, the newly appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and is steadily moving towards his forces. Abandoning Castlebar, Humbert moves towards Ulster via Sligo with the intention of igniting a rising there.

The combined Franco-Irish forces march northeast towards Sligo on their way to County Donegal in Ulster. When they get to the village of Collooney they are confronted by a unit of British troops from the garrison in Sligo, which is approximately five miles to the north of Collooney. A minor battle ensues at Carricknagat, a small townland to the immediate north of Collooney, hence the alternate name for the battle: the Battle of Carricknagat.

On September 5, 1798, the Franco-Irish troops push north through County Sligo but are halted by a cannon which the British forces have installed above Union Rock near Collooney.

A young Irish aide to General Humbert, Lieutenant Bartholomew Teeling, distinguishes himself during the encounter. Teeling clears the way for the advancing Irish-French army by single-handedly disabling a British gunnery post located high on Union Rock when he breaks from the French ranks and gallops toward the gunner’s position. Teeling is armed with a pistol and he shoots the cannon’s marksman and captures the cannon. After the loss of the cannon position, the French and Irish advance and the British retreat toward their barracks at Sligo, leaving 120 dead and 100 prisoners.

Colonel Charles Vereker, who commands the Limerick militia in the standoff, is awarded a peerage for his role in the battle.

In 1898, the centenary year of the battle, a statue of Teeling is erected in Carricknagat. Johnnie Woods of Aughamore, Sligo, County Sligo, a far-famed reliable scaffolder, erects the spire for this monument.

(Pictured: The monument commemorating the battle)


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The Flight of the Earls

On September 4, 1607, Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, and Rory O’Donnell, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell, and about ninety followers depart from Lough Swilly for the European continent. It is known in Irish history as the “Flight of the Earls.” Their permanent exile is a watershed event in Irish history, symbolizing the end of the old Gaelic order.

After the defeat at the Siege of Kinsale in 1601, Hugh Roe O’Donnell of Tyrconnell travels to Spain to seek support from Philip III. Unsuccessful, he dies in Spain and is succeeded by his younger brother Rory O’Donnell.

The O’Neills and O’Donnells retain their lands and titles, although with much-diminished extent and authority. However, the countryside is laid bare in a campaign of destruction in 1602, which induces famine in 1603. Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, is pardoned under the terms of the Treaty of Mellifont in March 1603 and submits to the crown.

When King James VI and I takes the English throne in 1603, he quickly proceeds to issue pardons for the Irish lords and their rebel forces. Already reigning as king of Scotland, he has a better understanding of the advantages from working with local chiefs in the Scottish Highlands. However, as in other Irish lordships, the 1603 peace involves O’Neill losing substantial areas of land to his cousins and neighbors, who would be granted freeholds under the English system, instead of the looser arrangements under the former Brehon law system. This is not a new policy but is a well-understood and longstanding practice in the Tudor conquest of Ireland.

On September 10, 1602, the Prince of Tyrconnell has already died, allegedly assassinated, in Spain, and his brother succeeds him as 25th Chieftain of the O’Donnell clan. He is later granted the Earldom of Tyrconnell by King James I on September 4, 1603, and restored to a somewhat diminished scale of territories in Tyrconnell on February 10, 1604.

In 1605, the new Lord Deputy of Ireland, Sir Arthur Chichester, begins to encroach on the former freedoms of the two Earls and The Maguire, enforcing the new freeholds, especially that granted in North Ulster to the O’Cahan chief. The O’Cahan had formerly been important subjects of the O’Neills and required protection; in turn, Chichester wants to reduce O’Neill’s authority. O’Cahan has also wanted to remove himself from O’Neill’s overlordship. An option is to charge O’Neill with treason if he does not comply with the new arrangements. The discovery of the Gunpowder Plot in the same year makes it harder for Catholics to appear loyal to both the crown and the papacy. A lengthy legal battle however finds in O’Neill’s favor.

By 1607, O’Neill’s allies the Maguires and the Earl of Tyrconnell are finding it hard to maintain their prestige on lower incomes. They plan to seek Spanish support before news of the Battle of Gibraltar arrives. When their ship drops anchor, O’Neill seems to have joined them on impulse. He had three options:

  • Flee with his friends and hope for a reinvasion by Spain
  • Go to London and stay at court until his grievances are redressed
  • Do nothing and live on a reduced income as a large landowner in Ulster

Fearing arrest, they choose to flee to Continental Europe, where they hope to recruit an army for the invasion of Ireland with Spanish help. However, earlier in 1607 the main Spanish fleet in Europe had been defeated by the Dutch in the Battle of Gibraltar. But the oft-repeated theory that they are all about to be arrested contradicts writer Tadhg Ó Cianáin, the main historical source on the Flight, who says at the start of his account that O’Neill heard news of the ship anchored at Rathmullen on Thursday September 6, and “took his leave of the Lord Justice (Chichester) the following Saturday.” They had been meeting at Slane for several days, and there is no proof that warrants for his arrest have been drawn up, nor is it a hurried departure.

Also, as the Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604) has been ended by the Treaty of London in 1604, King Philip III of Spain wants to remain at peace with England under its new Stuart dynasty. As a part of the peace proposals, a Spanish princess is to marry James’ son, Henry, though this never happens. Spain had also gone bankrupt in 1598. Tyrone ignores all these realities, remains in Italy, and persists with his invasion plan until his death in exile in 1616.

The earls set sail from Rathmullan, a village on the shore of Lough Swilly in County Donegal, with some of the leading Gaelic families in Ulster. Several leave their wives behind, hoping either to return or retrieve them later. They travel down Lough Swilly on a French ship. Their departure is the end of the old Gaelic order, in that the earls are descended from Gaelic clan dynasties that had ruled their parts of Ulster for centuries. They finally reach the Continent on October 4, 1607.

Their destination is Spain, but they disembark in France. The party proceeds overland to Spanish Flanders, some remaining in Leuven, while the main party continues to Italy. Tadhg Ó Cianáin subsequently describes the journey in great detail. While the party is welcomed by many important officials in the Spanish Netherlands, he makes no mention of any negotiations or planning between the earls and the Spanish to start a new war to regain the earls’ properties.

James I soon plants the O’Neill and O’Donnell lands with Protestant settlers, helping to sow the seeds of the present “Troubles.” O’Donnell dies in Rome in 1608 and O’Neill dies there also in 1616.

Ó Cianáin’s diary is important as the only continuous and contemporaneous account of the Flight. Its original title, Turas na dTaoiseach nUltach as Éirinn – the departure of the Chiefs of Ulster from Ireland – has been changed since the creation of the more dramatic phrase “Flight of the Earls” to the latter’s modern literal translation, Imeacht na nIarlaí.

The Flight of the Earls is a watershed event in Irish history, as the ancient Gaelic aristocracy of Ulster goes into permanent exile. Despite their attachment to and importance in the Gaelic system, the Earls’ ancestors had accepted their Earldoms from the English-run Kingdom of Ireland in the 1540s, under the policy of surrender and regrant. Some historians argue that their flight is forced upon them by the fallout from the Tudor conquest of Ireland, while others that it is an enormous strategic mistake that clears the way for the Plantation of Ulster.

From 1616, a number of bards outside Ulster have a poetic debate in the “Contention of the bards” and one of the arguments celebrates King James’s Gaelic-Irish Milesian ancestry through Malcolm III of Scotland. So, it is debatable whether the Gaelic order has ended or is evolving.

(Pictured: A bronze sculpture commemorating the Flight in Rathmullan, County Donegal)


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Birth of John Redmond, Irish Nationalist Politician

John Edward Redmond, Irish nationalist politician, barrister, and Member of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, is born to an old prominent Catholic family in Kilrane, County Wexford on September 1, 1856. He is best known as leader of the moderate Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) from 1900 until his death. He is also leader of the paramilitary organisation the National Volunteers.

Several of Redmond’s relatives are politicians. He takes over control of the minority IPP faction loyal to Charles Stewart Parnell after Parnell dies in 1891. He is a conciliatory politician who achieves the two main objectives of his political life: party unity and, in September 1914, the passing of the Irish Home Rule Act.

The Irish Home Rule Act grants limited self-government to Ireland, within the United Kingdom. However, implementation of Home Rule is suspended by the outbreak of the World War I. Redmond calls on the National Volunteers to join Irish regiments of the New British Army and support the British and Allied war effort to restore the “freedom of small nations” on the European continent, thereby to also ensure the implementation of Home Rule after a war that is expected to be of short duration. However, after the Easter Rising of 1916, Irish public opinion shifts in favour of militant republicanism and full Irish independence, resulting in his party losing its dominance in Irish politics.

In sharp contrast to Parnell, Redmond lacks charisma. He works well in small committees but has little success in arousing large audiences. Parnell had always chosen the nominees to Parliament. Now they are selected by the local party organisations, giving Redmond numerous weak MPs over whom he has little control. He is an excellent representative of the old Ireland but grows increasingly old-fashioned because he pays little attention to the new forces attracting younger Irishmen, such as Sinn Féin in politics, the Gaelic Athletic Association in sports, and the Gaelic League in cultural affairs.

Redmond never tries to understand the unionist forces emerging in Ulster. He is further weakened in 1914 by the formation of the Irish Volunteers by Sinn Féin members. His enthusiastic support for the British war effort alienates many Irish nationalists. His party has been increasingly hollowed out, and a major crisis, notably the Easter Rising, is enough to destroy it.

Redmond is increasingly eclipsed by ill-health after 1916. An operation in March 1918 to remove an intestinal obstruction appears to progress well initially, but he then suffers heart failure. He dies a few hours later at a London nursing home on March 6, 1918.

Condolences and expressions of sympathy are widely expressed. After a funeral service in Westminster Cathedral his remains are interred, as requested in a manner characteristic of the man, in the family vault at the old Knights Templars‘ chapel yard of Saint John’s Cemetery, Wexford, amongst his own people rather than in the traditional burial place for Irish statesmen and heroes in Glasnevin Cemetery. The small, neglected cemetery near the town centre is kept locked to the public. His vault, which has been in a dilapidated state, has been only partially restored by Wexford County Council.


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Death of David Hammond, Singer, Folklorist & Television Producer

David Andrew (Davy) Hammond, singer, folklorist, television producer and documentary maker, dies in Belfast, Northern Ireland, following a long illness, on August 25, 2008.

Hammond is born on December 5, 1928, in Miss Kells’s nursing home on the Castlereagh Road in Belfast, the son of Leslie Hammond, a tram driver, and his wife Annie (née Lamont). His parents are not city people; his mother grew up near Ballybogy in the Ballymoney area of County Antrim, and his father, though from a family with roots in south County Londonderry, had lived in Ballymoney as a boy, and had been apprenticed to a blacksmith there. Both have a strong sense of their rural identity and maintain the Ulster Scots dialect of their childhood. They are never quite at home in the Belfast suburb of Cregagh, and in particular do not share the sectarian attitudes that are much more present in 1930s Belfast than they had been in north Antrim, one of the last strongholds of Presbyterian radicalism. Even as a boy, Hammond is interested in the old songs that his mother sang and realises that the traditions in which his parents had been nurtured are disappearing quickly in an increasingly urbanising and modernising world. When he encounters the work of Emyr Estyn Evans in the early 1940s, he is encouraged to document both rural tradition and the street life of the city, and he and a couple of friends, though still just teenagers, ride off on their bicycles to look for folklore in the hinterland of Belfast.

After primary school, Hammond wins a scholarship in 1941 to Methodist College Belfast, where he does well in examinations, and then goes to Stranmillis University College to train as a teacher. In his first job, in Harding Memorial primary school in east Belfast, he proves to be a popular, idealistic teacher, and is remembered by his pupils fifty years later as a fine singer and a teller of ghost stories, who had taken the class on memorable youth-hosteling trips to the Mourne Mountains. Youth hosteling and folklore collecting increases his awareness and understanding of the rich traditions of the whole community in the north of Ireland, and he is never constrained by political or religious barriers. His early career mirrors closely that of James Hawthorne, and their paths are to cross in later life.

Hammond is friendly with many others active in the cultural life of Northern Ireland and makes a name for himself as a song collector and eventually as an expert on all aspects of traditional singing. In 1956, he is awarded a scholarship to travel in the United States to meet the important pioneers of folk-music collecting and performance there. He records his first LP record of Ulster songs, I Am The Wee Falorie Man (1958), in the United States, and becomes friends with Pete Seeger, the Appalachian singer Jean Ritchie, with old blues singers, and notably with Liam Clancy, one of the three Clancy brothers who as a quartet with Tommy Makem are to popularise Irish folk music in the United States and elsewhere.

On returning to Belfast, Hammond takes a job in 1958 in Orangefield secondary school in the east of the city, where the highly regarded headmaster John Malone encourages new approaches to education. Among his pupils at Orangefield is George Ivan “Van” Morrison, who credits him with inspiring his interest in Irish traditional music. Hammond enjoys teaching but is increasingly drawn to folk-song performance and recording. He appears regularly on radio programmes of the BBC and Radio Éireann, and in 1964 joins the school’s department in BBC Northern Ireland. There, with colleagues like Sam Hanna Bell, James Hawthorne and others, he works on programmes such as Today and Yesterday in Northern Ireland, which for the first time introduces pupils (and many adults) to local history and to aspects of tradition. In 1968, with two friends, the poets Seamus Heaney and Michael Longley, he puts on poetry and traditional music events in schools all over the province. The Arts Council funds the Room to Rhyme project, which is immensely influential and inspiring, and is still talked about many years later by those who attended as children.

Hammond is creatively involved with hundreds of hours of broadcasting, in television as well as radio, and eventually for adults as well as children. He writes scripts, produces documentary series such as Ulster in Focus and Explorations, and brings an artistic sensibility to filming, as well as working sympathetically with traditional singers and craftspeople. Dusty Bluebells, a sensitively made film of Belfast children’s street games, wins the prestigious Golden Harp award in 1972. After he leaves the BBC to work as a freelance, and founds Flying Fox Films in 1986, he continues making documentaries on many aspects of Ulster life and heritage. His film called Steel Chest, Nail in the Boot and the Barking Dog (1986), about working in the Belfast shipyards, also wins a Golden Harp award. A companion book of the same name is published. Another book is Belfast, City of Song (1989), with Maurice Leyden. In 1979, he edits a volume of the songs of Thomas Moore. His documentary programmes include films about singers from Boho, County Fermanagh, and about the big houses of the gentry in Ireland. The Magic Fiddle (1991/2) examines the role of the instrument in the folk music of Ireland, Scandinavia, Canada, and the American south, while Another Kind of Freedom (1993) is about the experiences of a former Orangefield pupil, the Beirut hostage Brian Keenan. He also produces and directs the films Something to Write Home About (1998), Where Are You Now? (1999), and Bogland (1999), all of which explore Seamus Heaney’s home region and experiences.

The first poem in Heaney’s collection Wintering Out (1972) is entitled “For David Hammond and Michael Longley.” Their lifelong friendship leads to several other creative collaborations. In particular, after a distressing evening in 1972 when Hammond, affected by the despair and terror unleashed by Irish Republican Army (IRA) bombing of his city, is for once unable to sing, Heaney meditates on the experience in an essay and in an important poem, “The singer’s house” (subsequently included in his 1979 Field Work collection). The poem urges the singer to keep singing, to defend the values of art and friendship in a hostile time. Hammond collaborates with Dónal Lunny and other traditional musicians to bring out an LP also called The Singer’s House (1978), which includes Heaney’s poem on the album sleeve, and features some of the songs that he had made famous, such as “My Aunt Jane” and “Bonny Woodgreen,” from his vast repertoire of songs from Ulster. The album is reissued in 1980.

In 1995, Hammond is one of Heaney’s personal guests at the award of his Nobel prize in Stockholm, characteristically wearing his usual, mustard-yellow, cattle-dealer boots with evening dress. On another formal occasion, when he is awarded an honorary doctorate by Dublin City University in November 2003, he surprises the audience by standing up in his academic robes to sing “My Lagan love,” instead of giving an address. His unique, light mellow voice is an ideal vehicle for the traditional ballads which he knows so well. He records a number of records in the 1960s, including Belfast Street Songs, and publishes the book Songs of Belfast (1978). He also encourages traditional musicians like Arty McGlynn, and collaborates with them on various recording projects. He is well known for live and often impromptu performances at festivals and venues in Ireland and the United States. He also performs at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

Hammond is also a notable collaborator with poets and dramatists, especially in the important Field Day Theatre Company project, of which he is a director, along with Seamus Heaney, Tom Paulin, Seamus Deane, Thomas Kilroy, and the project’s founders, Brian Friel and Stephen Rea. He supports the Field Day search for a “fifth province,” where history and community and culture can intersect, believing that to speak unthinkingly of “two traditions” is to perpetuate superficial political divisions. As he says in an interview in The Irish Times on July 4, 1998, songs can “take you out of yourself” and become bridges to unite people.

Hammond receives many honours. In 1994, he receives the Estyn Evans award for his contribution to mutual understanding, and his work is featured in several major events in his honour: in the University of North Florida (1999), in the Celtic Film Festival in Belfast (2003), and in Belfast’s Linen Hall Library (2005). A Time to Dream, a film about his life and work, is broadcast on BBC Northern Ireland in December 2008.

Hammond dies in hospital in Belfast, after a long illness, on August 25, 2008, survived by his wife Eileen (née Hambleton), whom he marries on July 19, 1954, and by their son and three daughters. His funeral in St Finnian’s church is a major cultural event, where friends sing, play and speak in his honour.

In Seamus Heaney’s last collection of poetry, Human Chain (2010), he includes a poignant farewell to Hammond. The poet imagines (or perhaps dreams) of another visit to the singer’s house, but this time “The door was open, and the house was dark.”

(From: “Hammond, David Andrew (‘Davy’)” by Linde Lunney, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, December 2014)


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Birth of Frederick Hugh Crawford, Loyalist & British Army Officer

Colonel Frederick Hugh Crawford, CBE, JP, an officer in the British Army, is born in Belfast on August 21, 1861. A staunch Ulster loyalist, he is one of the lesser-known figures in Ulster Unionist history but one who is hugely influential because of his involvement in what is known as the Larne gun-running incident, when he is responsible for smuggling over 25,000 guns and ammunition into the North on the night of April 24, 1914. This makes him a hero for Northern Ireland‘s unionists.

Crawford is born into a “solid Methodist” family of Ulster Scots roots. He attends Methodist College Belfast and University College London (UCL). While Crawford is a determined Ulster loyalist, his great-grandfather was Alexander Crawford, a United Irishman arrested in March 1797 for “high treason,” and sent to Kilmainham Gaol, sharing a cell with prominent United Irishman Henry Joy McCracken.

According to the 1911 census for Ireland, Crawford is living in Marlborough Park, Belfast, with his wife of 15 years, Helen, and four of their five children: Helen Nannie, Marjorie Doreen, Ethel Bethea and Malcolm Adair Alexander. His other child, Stuart Wright Knox, is recorded as a pupil at Ballycloghan National School, Belfast. Stuart would become a lieutenant colonel in the British Army, before being invalided in 1944. Malcolm, after being a member of the Colonial Police, joins the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), advancing to District Inspector. In 1931, Malcolm becomes a Justice of the Peace for Singapore.

Crawford works as an engineer for White Star Line in the 1880s, before returning from Australia in 1892. In 1894, he enlists with the Mid-Ulster Artillery regiment of the British Army, before being transferred to the Donegal Artillery, with which he serves during the Boer Wars, earning himself the rank of major.

In 1898, Crawford is appointed governor of Campbell College, Belfast. Two of his children, Stuart Wright Knox and Malcolm Adair Alexander, both attend Campbell College.

In 1911, Crawford becomes a member of the Ulster Unionist Council. On September 28, 1912, he is in charge of the 2,500 well-dressed stewards and marshals that escort Sir Edward Carson and the Ulster Unionist leadership from the Ulster Hall in central Belfast to the nearby City Hall on Donegall Square for the signing of the Ulster Covenant, which he allegedly signs in his own blood. With the formation of the Ulster Volunteers in 1913, he is made their Director of Ordnance.

During World War I Crawford is an officer commanding the Royal Army Service Corps and is awarded the Royal Humane Society‘s bronze medal for saving life. He also becomes a justice of the peace for Belfast.

With regard to Irish Home Rule, Crawford is strongly partisan and backs armed resistance to it, being contemptuous of those who use political bluffing. His advocation of armed resistance is evident when he remarks, at a meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council, that his heart “rejoiced” when he heard talk of looking into using physical force. At another meeting he even goes as far as asking some attendees to step into another room where he has fixed bayonets, rifles and cartridges laid out.

In 1910, the Ulster Unionist Council plans for the creation of an army to oppose Home Rule and approaches Crawford to act as their agent in securing weapons and ammunition. He tries several times to smuggle arms into Ulster, however, vigilant customs officials seize many of them at the docks. Despite this, the meticulously planned and audacious Larne gun-running of April 1914, devised and carried out by Crawford, is successful in bringing in enough arms to equip the Ulster Volunteer Force.

By the 1920s Crawford remains as stoic in his beliefs, remarking in a letter in 1920 that “I am ashamed to call myself an Irishman. Thank God I am not one. I am an Ulsterman, a very different breed.” In March 1920, he begins to reorganize the UVF and in May 1920 he appeals to Carson and James Craig for official government recognition. He states, “We in Ulster will not be able to hold our men in hand much longer…we will have the Protestants…killing a lot of the well-known Sinn Féin leaders and hanging half a dozen priests.” In 1921, he attempts to create an organisation intended to be a “Detective Reserve,” but called the “Ulster Brotherhood,” the aims of which are to uphold the Protestant religion and political and religious freedom, as well as use all means to “destroy and wipe out the Sinn Féin conspiracy of murder, assassination and outrage.” This organisation only lasts for a few months after failing to gain acceptance from the political authorities.

In 1921, Crawford is included in the Royal Honours List and appointed a CBE. In 1934, he writes his memoirs, titled Guns for Ulster.

Crawford dies on November 5, 1952, and is buried in the City Cemetery, Falls Road, Belfast. Upon news of his death, he is described by the then Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Sir Basil Brooke, as being “as a fearless fighter in the historic fight to keep Ulster British.”


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Death of Basil Stanlake Brooke, Third Prime Minister of Northern Ireland

Basil Stanlake Brooke, 1st Viscount Brookeborough, KG, CBE, MC, TD, PC (Ire), Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) politician who serves as the third Prime Minister of Northern Ireland from May 1943 until March 1963, dies on August 18, 1973, at Colebrooke Park, Brookeborough, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. He has been described as “perhaps the last Unionist leader to command respect, loyalty and affection across the social and political spectrum.” Equally well, he has also been described as one of the most hardline anti-Catholic leaders of the UUP, and his legacy involves founding his own paramilitary group, which feeds into the reactivation of the Ulster Volunteers.

Brooke is born on June 9, 1888, at Colebrooke Park, his family’s neo-Classical ancestral seat on what is then the several-thousand-acre Colebrooke Estate, just outside Brookeborough, a village near Lisnaskea in County Fermanagh. He is the eldest son of Sir Arthur Douglas Brooke, 4th Baronet, whom he succeeds as 5th Baronet when his father dies in 1907. His mother is Gertrude Isabella Batson. He is a nephew of Field Marshal Alan Brooke, 1st Viscount Alanbrooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) during World War II, who is only five years his senior. His sister Sheelah marries Sir Henry Mulholland, Speaker of the Stormont House of Commons and son of Lord Dunleath. He is educated for five years at St. George’s School in Pau, France, and then at Winchester College (1901–05).

After graduating from the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, Brooke is commissioned into the Royal Fusiliers on September 26, 1908, as a second lieutenant. He transfers to the 10th Royal Hussars in 1911. He is awarded the Military Cross and Croix de guerre with palm for his service during World War I.

Brooke is a very active Ulster Unionist Party member and ally of Edward Carson. He founds his own paramilitary group, Brooke’s Fermanagh Vigilance, from men returning from the war front in 1918. Although the umbrella Ulster Volunteers had been quiescent during the war, it is not defunct. It re-emerges strongly in 1920, subsuming groups like Brooke’s.

In 1920, having reached the rank of captain, Brooke leaves the British Army to farm the Colebrooke Estate, the family estate in west Ulster, at which point he turns toward a career in politics.

Brooke has a very long political career. When he resigns the Premiership of Northern Ireland in March 1963, he is Northern Ireland’s longest-serving prime minister, having held office for two months short of 20 years. He also establishes a United Kingdom record by holding government office continuously for 33 years.

In 1921, Brooke is elected to the Senate of Northern Ireland, but he resigns the following year to become Commandant of the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC) in their fight against the Irish Republican Army (IRA). He is created a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1921.

In 1929 Brooke is elected to the House of Commons of Northern Ireland as Ulster Unionist Party MP for the Lisnaskea division of County Fermanagh. In the words of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, “his thin, wiry frame, with the inevitable cigarette in hand, and clipped, anglicised accent were to be a feature of Stormont for the next forty years.”

Brooke becomes Minister of Agriculture in 1933. By virtue of this appointment, he also acquires the rank of Privy Councilor of Northern Ireland. From 1941 to 1943 he is Minister of Commerce.

On May 2, 1943, Brooke succeeds John M. Andrews as Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. In 1952, while Prime Minister, was raised to the peerage as Viscount Brookeborough, the title taken from the village named after the Brookes. Although a peer, he retained his seat in the House of Commons at Stormont and remained Prime Minister for another decade.

As the Northern Ireland economy begins to de-industrialise in the mid-1950s, leading to high unemployment amongst the Protestant working classes, Brooke faces increasing disenchantment amongst UUP backbenchers for what is regarded as his indifferent and ineffectual approach to mounting economic problems. As this disenchantment grows, British civil servants and some members of the UUP combine to exert discreet and ultimately effective pressure on Brooke to resign to make way for Captain Terence O’Neill, who is Minister of Finance.

In 1963, his health having worsened, Brooke resigns as Prime Minister. However, he remains a member of the House of Commons of Northern Ireland until the 1969 Northern Ireland general election, becoming the Father of the House in 1965. During his last years in the Parliament of Northern Ireland he publicly opposes the liberal policies of his successor Terence O’Neill, who actively seeks to improve relationships with the Republic of Ireland, and who attempts to address some of the grievances of Catholics and grant many of the demands of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA).

Brooke is noted for his casual style toward his ministerial duties. Terence O’Neill later writes of him, “he was good company and a good raconteur, and those who met him imagined that he was relaxing away from his desk. However, they did not realise that there was no desk.”

In his retirement Brooke develops commercial interests as chairman of Carreras (Northern Ireland), a director of Devenish Trade, and president of the Northern Ireland Institute of Directors. He is also made an honorary LL.D. of Queen’s University Belfast.

From 1970 to 1973, years in which the Stormont institution comes under its greatest strain and eventually crumbles, Brooke makes only occasional forays into political life. In 1972, he appears next to William Craig MP on the balcony of Parliament Buildings at Stormont, a diminutive figure beside the leader of the Vanguard Unionist Progressive Party (VUPP) who is rallying right-wing Unionists against the Government of Northern Ireland. He opposes the Westminster white paper on the future of Northern Ireland and causes some embarrassment to his son, Captain John Brooke, the UUP Chief Whip and an ally of Brian Faulkner, by speaking against the Faulkner ministry‘s proposals.

Brooke dies at his home, Colebrooke Park, on the Colebrooke Estate, on August 18, 1973. His remains are cremated at Roselawn Cemetery, East Belfast, three days later, and, in accordance with his wishes, his ashes are scattered on the demesne surrounding his beloved Colebrooke Park.


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Birth of Uinseann MacEoin, Architect & Republican Campaigner

Uinseann Ó Rathaille MacEoin, Irish architect, journalist, republican campaigner and historian, is born in Pomeroy, County Tyrone, on July 4, 1920.

MacEoin is born Vincent O’Rahilly McGuone to Malachy McGuone, owner of the Central Hotel in Pomeroy and a wine and spirit merchant, and Catherine (née Fox). He has three siblings. Both of his parents are nationalists, and name all their children after leaders of the Easter Rising in 1916. Under the First Dáil in 1918, his father is appointed a judge. This results in him being interned on the prison ship Argenta on Larne Lough from 1922 to 1923. The family moves to Dublin after his release. His father dies in 1933, which leads to his wife running a workingmen’s café in East Essex Street. The family later lives on Marlborough Road, Donnybrook.

MacEoin attends boarding school at Blackrock College and is then articled to the architectural practice of Vincent Kelly in Merrion Square. As an active republican, he lives in a house on Northumberland Road from late 1939 to May 1940 where he helps in the production and distribution of an Irish Republican Army (IRA) weekly newspaper, War News. The IRA is banned by the Irish government in 1936, and its bombing campaign in Britain in 1939 is viewed by the government as a threat to Irish neutrality. MacEoin is among a group of republicans arrested in June 1940 and imprisoned in Arbour Hill Prison for a year. Once released, he is rearrested and interned at the Curragh for three years. He is sentenced to 3-months imprisonment in October 1943 for possession of incriminating documents. He is also charged with possession of ammunition, but testifies he was given the rounds against his will and never appears to have engaged in any violence. During his internment, he is taught the Irish language by Máirtín Ó Cadhain and is exposed to the socialist views of his fellow inmates. It is at this time that he adopts the Irish form of his name, Uinseann MacEoin.

While imprisoned in the 1940s, MacEoin continues his studies by correspondence and qualifies as an architect in 1945 at University College Dublin (UCD). His designs for a memorial garden in 1946 to those who died during the Irish War of Independence are commended. In 1959, he designs the site in Ballyseedy, County Kerry, for a monument by Yann Goulet commemorating those killed in the Irish Civil War and members of the IRA from Kerry who died. In 1948, he qualifies in town planning and takes up a position with Michael Scott‘s architectural practice. He works for a short time with Dublin Corporation, with their housing department, before establishing his own practice in 1955.

During the 1950s, MacEoin is a contributing editor on interior design in Hugh McLaughlin‘s magazine Creation, becoming editor of Irish Architect and Contractor in 1955. He enters into a partnership with Aidan Kelly in 1969 as MacEoin Kelly and Associates. In the early 1970s, he designs a shopping and housing development outside Dundalk, called Ard Easmuinn. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, he continues as an influential architectural journalist, founding and editing Build from 1965 to 1969, and later Plan. His company, Pomeroy Press, publishes Plan along with other serials such as Stream and Field. He writes a large proportion of the copy in these periodicals, much under his own name, but he also uses pseudonyms, in particular in Plan as “Michael O’Brien.” He writes about his strong views on social housing, national infrastructure, and foreign and slum landlords, often libelously.

Despite his republican and socialist views, MacEoin is a staunch advocate for the preservation of Georgian Dublin, and campaigns for their preservation. On this topic, he writes letters to newspapers, takes part in television and radio discussions, writes comment pieces and editorials, speaks at public hearings, and takes part in direct protests such as sit-ins in buildings including those on Baggot Street, Pembroke Street, Hume Street, and Molesworth Street. He is also an active member of the Irish Georgian Society, and he campaigns actively against the road widening schemes in Dublin the 1970s and 1980s.

MacEoin and his wife purchase five Georgian houses on Mountjoy Square and three on Henrietta Street in the 1960s, all almost derelict. They refurbish them and lease them out, under the company name Luke Gardiner Ltd. He renames the 5 Henrietta Street property James Bryson House. His architectural practice moves into one of the Mountjoy Square houses. Along with fellow campaigners, Mariga Guinness and Deirdre Kelly, this demonstrates that these buildings can be salvaged and are not the dangerous structures other architects and developers claim them to be. He also purchases and saves Heath House, near Portlaoise, County Laois, living there toward the end of his life. He offers free conservation and architectural advice to community groups and is a volunteer on the renovation works on projects including Tailors’ Hall.

MacEoin remains politically active, joining Clann na Poblachta, the Wolfe Tone Societies (WTS), the Dublin Civic Group, the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) and the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement. To what extent he is involved in republican or IRA activities after 1945 is not clear. However, in March 1963, he is called a witness to a case in Scotland involving a Glasgow bookmaker by the name of Samuel Docherty and the Royal Bank of Scotland. Docherty claims the bank owes him £50,000. MacEoin testifies that in February 1962 he had travelled with £50,000 in cash from Dublin to lodge to Docherty’s account in the Royal Bank of Scotland in Belfast, as a loan. When asked about the origin of this large sum of money, he states it was supplied by another person but does not divulge that person’s name. This immediately triggers the court’s suspicions, and the judge warns MacEoin he will be contempt of court if he does not name the supplier of the money. He is placed in police custody for the day, and eventually he agrees to give the name in writing in confidence to the judge. The judge ultimately rules that Docherty is guilty of attempted fraud and perjury and that MacEoin’s involvement reeks of criminality. However, no further action is ever brought forward against Docherty or MacEoin.

In Sinn Féin‘s 1971 Éire Nua social and economic programme, MacEoin writes the chapter on “Planning,” and attends meetings in Monaghan in the early 1970s on the Dáil Uladh, a parliament for the 9-county Ulster province. In 1981, during the republican hunger strikes, one of his Mountyjoy Square houses is used as the national headquarters of the National H-Block Committee. Following the 1986 Sinn Féin split, he supports Republican Sinn Féin. He is a founding member of the Constitutional Rights Campaign in 1987, a group which aims to protect the rights of Irish citizens in the European Economic Community (EEC), having campaigned against Ireland joining the EEC in the early 1970s. In 1978, he is sentenced to two weeks in Mountjoy Prison for non-payment of a fine issued for not having a television licence. He had refused to buy one to protest the lack of Irish language programming.

As an environmentalist, MacEoin opposes private car ownership, and advocates for cycleways and the redevelopment of the railway lines. He writes about the “greenhouse effect” as early as 1969. As a hill walker and mountaineer, he claims to be the first Irishman to register successful climbs of all 284 Scottish peaks, known as the Munros, in 1987. He also climbs in the Alps and the Pyrenees.

MacEoin writes three books on his memories, and those of his former comrades: Survivors (1980), on the lives of leading Irish republicans, Harry (1986), a part biography part autobiography of Harry White, and The IRA in the twilight years 1923–48 (1997). He also publishes a novel, Sybil: a tale of innocence (1992) with his publishing house, Argenta, under the name Eoin O’Rahilly. He also interviews and records dozens of Republicans as part of his research for his books. These recordings are later converted into a digital oral history archive held in trust by the Irish Defence Forces.

MacEoin marries Margaret Russell in 1956 in Navan, County Meath. They have a daughter and two sons.

MacEoin dies in a nursing home in Shankill, Dublin, on December 21, 2007. His estate at the time of his death is valued at over €3 million. His son, Nuada, takes over his father’s architectural practice.