page_title: Louis MacNeice
section_title: Ireland, 1907–1917
hierarchical_section_title: Louis MacNeice / Life / Ireland, 1907–1917
caption_attribution_description: English: Louis Macneice plaque, Carrickfergus. The poet Louis Macneice lived in the North Road, Carrickfergus - his father was rector of St Nicholas's Church. The site is now occupied by sheltered housing. This plaque is at the entrance to the Macneice Fold. For more information see http://www.ulsterhistory.co.uk/louismcneice.htm. He was buried at Christ Church, Carrowdore 437068.
context_page_description: Frederick Louis MacNeice CBE was an Irish poet and playwright from Northern Ireland, and a member of the Auden Group, which also included W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis. MacNeice's body of work was widely appreciated by the public during his lifetime, due in part to his relaxed but socially and emotionally aware style. Never as overtly or simplistically political as some of his contemporaries, he expressed a humane opposition to totalitarianism as well as an acute awareness of his roots.
context_section_description: Louis MacNeice (known as Freddie until his teens, when he adopted his middle name) was born in Belfast, the youngest son of John Frederick and Elizabeth Margaret ("Lily") MacNeice. Both were originally from the West of Ireland. MacNeice's father, a Protestant minister, would go on to become a bishop of the Church of Ireland and his mother Elizabeth née Cleshan, from Ballymacrony, County Galway, had been a schoolmistress. The family moved to Carrickfergus, County Antrim, soon after MacNeice's birth. When MacNeice was six, his mother was admitted to a Dublin nursing home suffering from severe depression and he did not see her again. She survived uterine cancer but died of tuberculosis in December 1914. MacNeice later described the cause of his mother's death as "obscure", and blamed his mother's cancer on his own difficult birth. His brother William, who had Down's syndrome, had been sent to live in an institution in Scotland during his mother's terminal illness. In 1917, his father remarried to Georgina Greer and MacNeice's sister Elizabeth was sent to board at a preparatory school at Sherborne, England. MacNeice joined her at Sherborne Preparatory School later in the year.
caption: Plaque at site of MacNeice's childhood home in Carrickfergus
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