placenamesSkreen
An Scrín
At Lecarrow, an older residence has accommodated successive forms of religious community life.
The name
A reliable full-name meaning has not been established here. The recorded Irish and English forms are given without an unsupported translation.
Recorded forms
- An Scrín · Irish · main form · non-validated name
- Skreen · English · main form
Place & story
A house adapted for a different use
The national architectural inventory dates the main building at Holy Hill to about 1850. Its single-storey front has five bays, a hipped slate roof and a round-headed entrance with a fanlight. Later used as a convent, the house retained its domestic form within a changing religious setting. The inventory also records retreat houses scattered through the grounds and outbuildings refurbished around 2000. [2]
The arrival of the hermits
The Spiritual Life Institute community arrived in 1995 after Bishop Thomas Finnegan invited it to occupy the former Mercy convent. The community’s own history recalls his visit to its Nova Scotia centre and a subsequent decade of renovating buildings and gardens and constructing eleven hermitages at Skreen. It dates recognition as a diocesan institute to 2014 and its change of name to the Carmelite Community of Apostolic Hermits to 2016. Those institutional changes belong to the modern community, rather than the original house’s construction. [3]
Geographic information
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Skreen. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Holy Hill Hermitage, former Carrowculleen House, NIAH32401903 · National Inventory of Architectural Heritage
- Holy Hill Hermitage: the community’s history · Carmelite Community of Apostolic Hermits, Holy Hill
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2025-01-10. How this page was prepared.