Discover Skerries

The Rocky Islands

Skerries takes its name from the Old Norse sker, a rocky island or reef, and the islands are still the first thing you notice from the harbour. Shenick, with its Martello tower, is close enough to walk to at the lowest tides. Colt and St Patrick's sit further out, and Rockabill, the Cow and the Calf, carries a lighthouse four miles offshore and the biggest breeding colony of roseate terns in Europe. The Vikings raided the monastery on Church Island in 797, one of their earliest recorded landings in Ireland, and the Norse stayed long enough to leave the town its name.

The harbour was a serious fishing port into the 20th century, and a centre of hand embroidery before that. Both industries faded, and Skerries became what it is now, a commuter town for Dublin thirty kilometres south and a seaside resort that the rest of Fingal comes to on a fine day. The windmills on the hill behind the town milled flour from the medieval monastery of Holmpatrick; restored and turning again, they anchor the Saturday market. What holds it all together is the sea, and a town that swims in it all year round.