Skreen itself, whose name derives from the Irish word for a shrine or reliquary, hints at a sacred significance that predates any headstone or enclosing wall still visible today. Graveyards of this type, attached to old parish churches now ruined or entirely vanished, are among the most quietly resonant sites in rural Ireland, accumulating centuries of burial without fanfare or formal protection.

Skreen was an important ecclesiastical site in early medieval Ireland, and the broader townland retains traces of that long history in its very placename. Parish graveyards in this part of Connacht frequently occupy ground that was consecrated far earlier than the post-Norman church structures with which they are often associated, sometimes overlying or adjoining the remains of much older religious enclosures. The dead were brought to such places across generations, and the continuity of use is itself a kind of record, even when the stones are worn beyond reading and the church that once anchored the site has long since fallen.