Razed by Vikings in the 9th century
The shrine of Adomnán
St Adomnán - the first biographer of St Columba and one of his successors as abbot of Iona - is said to have served as the first abbot of the monastery at Skreen, and the place took its name, An Scrín, from a shrine holding his relics. Adomnán is remembered beyond this parish for the Cáin Adomnáin, the Law of the Innocents, an early effort to spare women, children and non-combatants in war. The abbey stood where the Church of Ireland church now stands. Viking raiders pillaged and razed it in the 9th century, and no trace of it survives above ground. A holy well dedicated to the saint, Toberawnaun, lies in the townland.
Born across the road, 1819
Sir George Gabriel Stokes
Sir George Gabriel Stokes (1819-1903) was born in the rectory across the road from Skreen church, where his father Gabriel Stokes was the Church of Ireland parson. He became Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge - the chair later held by Hawking - and his name survives in Stokes's theorem, the Navier-Stokes equations of fluid motion, and the discovery and naming of fluorescence. His elder brother John Whitley Stokes became Archdeacon of Armagh. Their father is buried inside the ruined medieval church beside the present one.
Stonemasons of Ardnaglass, 1774-1886
The Diamond box tombs
The graveyard around the old church holds a remarkable set of carved limestone box tombs, the work of the Diamonds, a family of master stonemasons who worked nearby at Ardnaglass between 1774 and 1886. The most celebrated is the 1824 Alexander Black tomb, cut by Old Frank Diamond, carved with a ploughman in top hat and tails behind a two-horse plough. Several tombs carry skull-and-crossbones motifs. The Diamond line is said to have kept up the stonecutting trade for seven generations.