Uinseann Mac Eoin 1920 – 2007; Go n-éirí an bóthar leis.

RIP

I knew little of the man, but his reputation and the matters in which he involved himself alone spoke volumes.

It is pleasing that his passion for planning, design and urbanisim well and truly lives on 😉

Before my time as well but like Miranda Guinness and Deirdre Kelly part of a group that had a huge input in preventing the total destruction of Georgian Dublin according to those who were there and greatly valued his contribution.

RIP

Sad news indeed.

RIP

Obituary piece in today’s Irish Times
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/obituaries/2007/1229/1198509954683.html

Tireless protector of Dublin’s heritage

Uinseann MacEoin: Uinseann MacEoin, who has died at the age of 87, was an architect and planner, fearless journalist and author, veteran republican, leading campaigner for the conservation of Georgian Dublin and an enthusiastic mountain climber – the first Irishman to “bag” all 284 “Munros” – Scottish peaks higher than 3,000ft.

He will be remembered chiefly as the founder and first editor of Plan magazine in its heyday, from 1967 to 1974, when it was a crusading journal that castigated planners, politicians, roads engineers, property developers and speculators, documenting and criticising their depredations on the fabric of Dublin in forthright terms.

“He loved being the sand in a machine. If there was a church of contrarians, he would have been the high priest,” says his eldest son, Nuada, who took over the architectural practice. He was indefatigable, in the true sense, at least until he succumbed to old age. At his best, he gave a clarion call for the protection of Dublin’s heritage.

Along with his wife, Margaret, he was not afraid of putting up money to save elements of the city’s Georgian heritage when they were at risk.

The couple established a company, Luke Gardiner Ltd (named after the late 18th-century developer), to buy houses on Mountjoy Square and Henrietta Street at a time when this was barely profitable.

Their three houses on Henrietta Street – numbers 5, 6 and 7 – were let in the main to a colony of artists, most of whom could not afford accommodation elsewhere. His architectural practice, MacEoin Kelly and Associates, operated from a Georgian house on Mountjoy Square – one of five bought by the couple over the years.

His partner in the practice, the late Aidan Kelly, pre-deceased Uinseann by two months. They had met in Hume Street, when students and others occupied Georgian houses threatened with demolition for six months. One of the occupiers was the late Deirdre Kelly, Aidan’s wife and founder of the Living City Group.

Uinseann was a leading member of the Dublin Civic Group for many years, as well as the Irish Georgian Society, the Wolfe Tone Society and Clann na Poblachta, the political party founded by fellow republican Seán MacBride. He was also involved in the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, at least in its early years.

He was born in Pomeroy, Co Tyrone, and spent his childhood there before the family moved to Dublin. Educated at Mount Sackville school in Castleknock and as a boarder in Blackrock College, he took up architecture by being “articled” to Vincent Kelly, who ran a small practice on Merrion Square.

In 1940, he was “lifted” under the Offences Against the State Act and spent a year in Arbour Hill prison before being interned in the Curragh for republican activities – although he was only involved peripherally in the IRA. He spent more than three years there, doing an architecture course by correspondence and learning Irish from Mairtín Ó Cadháin.

His father, Malachy MacEoin, had been interned in the prison ship, Argenta, in 1920. His mother, Catherine MacEoin, was fiercely republican and gave her children middle names culled from leaders of the 1916 Rising; Uinseann’s was Ó Rathaille. He himself was very much in the Wolfe Tone “broad church” tradition.

He was the author of three books with republican themes – Survivors (1980), which was based on interviews with veteran republicans; Harry (1986), a biography of Harry White, in which the two men who killed Kevin O’Higgins were named for the first time; and The IRA in the Twilight Years: 1923-1948, published in 1997.

Before establishing Plan , Uinseann was the editor of Build magazine, another journal that didn’t pull its punches. Apart from writing under his own name, he also had a pseudonym, Michael Quinn, for columns peppered with well-targeted invective. As source material for books on Dublin, Uinseann’s work was invaluable.

After qualifying as a town planner in 1948, he worked for Michael Scott and Partners and Dublin Corporation’s housing department before setting up his own architectural practice. In the Irish Georgian Society’s listing of conservation architects, Uinseann described himself as “Traveller – worker – architect – planner – historian”.

Among his projects, he included Ballsgrove House, near Drogheda, Co Louth. “Have had a major hand in what has been rebuilt in Mountjoy Square and entire internal renewal of 19, 21, 22, 23, 29, 30. Heath House (Westenra family, commenced 1727) with fine stable yard. Many others inspected and opinions given,” his entry says.

He spent most of his life in a well-loved house on Marlborough Road in Donnybrook, and latterly at The Heath House, near Portlaoise, another 18th-century building he saved from ruin. In his spare time, when not restoring buildings or writing books or letters to the editor of The Irish Times, he exercised himself climbing mountains.

He had conquered all of the Munros by 1987, also the Alps, apart from the Eiger and Matterhorn, but including Mont Blanc. He was still climbing the Pyrenées in 1997 until he “didn’t have the legs for it any more”, as Nuada put it. He spent the last years of his life in a nursing home in Shankill.

He is survived by his wife Margaret, sons Nuada and Ruadhán and daughter Aoife, sisters Una and Áine, brother Patrick and grandchildren Ailbhe, Naoise and Faolan.

Uinseann MacEoin: born July 4th, 1920; died December 21st, 2007