Schull


Schull or Skull is a town in County Cork, Ireland.
Located on the southwest coast, in West Cork, the village is dominated by Mount Gabriel. It has a sheltered harbour, used for recreational boating. The area, on the peninsula leading to Mizen Head, is a tourist destination, and there are numerous holiday homes along the adjoining coast. The village had a population of 700 in 2016. The town's secondary school, Schull Community College, houses one of the only planetariums in Ireland, along with a sailing school. Each year Schull harbour hosts the Fastnet International Schools Regatta.

Name

The first recorded place name for this area is "scol", from a Decretal Letter of Pope Innocent III in 1199 to the bishop of Cork confirming the rights of the bishop of Cork. Both Skull and Skul are used in the Down Survey of 1656–58. Skull is also used in the Grand Jury Map surveyed in the 1790s and published 1811.
The Placenames Order of 2012 lists "An Scoil" as the Irish name for the village, in which "Scoil" is translated from "school". This is attributed by some to a school which was ostensibly located in the area.
However, others question this derivation, and Gary Dempsey's thesis suggests that the "Scoil Mhuire" form dates to 1893 when the parish priest of Schull at the time, Very Rev. John O’Connor, who "fancied himself as a historian, misread a latin sentence as referring to a 'College of St. Mary' in Skull; in fact, the text referred to a collegiate church in Waterford but the PP had set the ball rolling".

Transport

Schull once had its own railway station. The village was the western terminus of the Schull and Skibbereen Railway, a steam-operated narrow gauge railway. This was closed by CIÉ in 1947. Schull railway station opened on 6 September 1886, closed for passenger and goods traffic on 27 January 1947, and finally closed altogether on 1 June 1953.

In literature

The book Silver River by Daisy Goodwin includes a section on the efforts of her 3x great-grandfather, the Rector of Skull, to help the populace during the Great Famine.

Notable people