Skreen derives from the Latin scrinium, a word for a box or case used to hold sacred relics, and the place took that name because a shrine belonging to its founder was once kept within the church walls. That is an unusual distinction; most Irish church sites are named for a saint, a landscape feature, or a clan. This one is named, essentially, for a container.

The church was founded in the 7th century by St Adamnán, who died in 704 and is perhaps better known as the biographer of St Columba and author of the Vita Columbae. The connection between the two saints runs through this site directly: the land on which the church was built had previously been granted to Columba himself, making Skreen a place layered with early Christian association. By the time of an ecclesiastical Visitation in 1615, the building had long outlasted the early medieval period that produced it, though not entirely in good repair; the record from that year notes that both the church and its chancel were thatched, suggesting a structure maintained in a fairly modest, functional way rather than rebuilt in stone after the fashion of later medieval parish churches.