Wall, Seán (1882–1921), revolutionary, was born 1 February 1882 near Bruff, Co. Limerick, one of at least three sons of Thomas Wall, small farmer, and Deborah Wall (née Lynch). The family had a tradition of Fenian sympathy and activity. He attended Bruff national school, but his further education at St Munchin's College, Limerick, was cut short at age 16 by the deaths within a few months of both his parents, leaving him as the family's chief support. Working as a builder, he established the contracting firm of Wall & Forde, specialising in building farm structures and creameries throughout the county. Other enterprises exercised his inventive turn of mind and enthusiasm for new products and production methods. He helped devise new cheese-making machinery, was involved in the manufacture of milk-powder, acquired one of the first steam-driven threshing mills, promoted newly designed mechanical milking apparatus, and used a motorcycle for business trips and leisure. Member of the Gaelic League and organiser of the local feis cheoil, he was taught Irish by George Clancy (qv), later Limerick lord mayor.
Active in the Irish Volunteers from their inception (1913), after the 1916 rising he revived the Bruff company (later battalion), becoming its commander. He was organiser and fund-raiser for Sinn Féin in 1917 by-elections and the 1918 general election. When Volunteer general headquarters intervened to assuage a fractious dispute within the Galtee battalion, Wall's reputation for organisation and diplomacy resulted in his appointment as officer-in-command of the newly formed East Limerick Brigade (summer 1918). While Wall supervised operational planning, command in the field was generally assumed by his deputy Tomás Malone (‘Sean Forde’). In preparation for a raid on the well-secured Kilmallock RIC barracks (27 May 1920), Wall smuggled ammunition and explosives by train from Dublin and subsequently participated in the engagement. This action and an earlier attack on Ballylanders barracks (27 April 1920) set tactical precedents for IRA police barracks raids; an innovation of the Kilmallock attack, attributed to Wall, was the use of petrol- and paraffin-filled bottles as incendiary missiles. Wall gave official sanction to the brigade's most significant innovation, the IRA's first flying column, established June 1920 under the command of Donnchadh O'Hannigan. One of a Sinn Féin majority elected to Limerick county council (June 1920), Wall was named chairman of the body, which declared its allegiance to Dáil Éireann. Involved in the establishment and operation of dáil courts and organisation of the republican loan, he advocated abolition of workhouses as a component of comprehensive reform of poor law administration. Interested in the possibility of harnessing water power to generate electricity, he initiated plans to conduct a survey of the River Shannon (abandoned after his death), an anticipation of the Shannon scheme. On 6 May 1921 Wall and his brigade staff, en route to a meeting of the IRA 2nd Southern Division council, were besieged by Black and Tans in a house at Newtown, Annacarty, Co. Tipperary. Leaving the house, Wall succeeded in drawing off the attackers, thereby allowing the escape of his command, but was shot and killed by hostile fire. Several days passed before his body was identified and transported to Limerick city, where obsequies at St John's cathedral and Mount St Lawrence cemetery occasioned widespread public and official mourning. A monument to Wall and his comrades of the 3rd Battalion, East Limerick Brigade, IRA, was unveiled in Bruff in 1952.
Wall was married with five young children. His brother, the Rev. Thomas Wall (d. 1956), curate at Drumcollogher, was one of two Limerick priests whose pro-republican activities occasioned intense controversy between Gen. John Maxwell (qv), the military governor, and Bishop Edward O'Dwyer (qv), who resisted concerted pressure to rebuke and transfer them (May 1916). Elected to the Sinn Féin executive (1917), in later years Thomas Wall was parish priest of Stonehall (1930–36) and Ballingarry (1936–56), where he was appointed canon.