placenamesSkreen
An Scrín
A family memoir and the school’s own history give twentieth-century perspectives on the district also known as Skryne.
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
- Achall · Irish · main form · historical name
- Skreen · English · main form
Place & story
A family arrives at the castle
Eoin Hickey’s memoir places his family’s move to Skryne Castle in 1948. His mother, historian Elizabeth Hickey, later recorded her memories of finding the house through a newspaper advertisement. Eoin recalls her wish that the children should attend the local school and grow up within the community. Parish priest Gerald Cooney welcomed them, despite the family’s different religious affiliation. [2]
Footsteps remembered upstairs
Hickey recalls hearing footsteps in the upstairs drawing room when the family believed nobody was there. He also remembers visits by writers investigating the castle’s ghost stories. This is an attributed recollection from a former resident, documenting the house’s reputation for haunting rather than establishing a supernatural explanation for the sounds. [2]
From stabling to bicycle storage
Pru Symmons’s school history describes an older classroom building, later used as a hall, with a basement where teachers’ ponies and traps were kept. The space subsequently stored bicycles. A replacement school opened across the road in 1946 during Father Cooney’s time as parish priest. That building remained in educational use until another replacement in 2004, recording successive changes within the same local institution. [3]
Geographic information
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Skreen. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Growing Up in Skryne: a journey through the nineteen-fifties · Eoin Hickey, reproduced by Navan and District Historical Society
- Scoil Cholmcille, Skryne: school history · Pru Symmons, Scoil Cholmcille
- Skryne Castle, County Meath, as photographed in September 2013 illustration: based on a Castles of Leinster: Skreen, Meath by Garry Dickinson. AI-assisted watercolour and ink adaptation; cream paper margins added, incidental clutter omitted and fine details simplified. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2021-10-29. How this page was prepared.