Skeulan Tree, Aboyne - Aboyne & Glentannar

Grid reference

NO 532 997 (accurate position)

Six-figure easting & northing

353200 799700

Latitude

57.086096768818344

Longitude

-2.7722659256203848

County

Aberdeenshire

Nearby places

Skeulan Well, Aboyne, Aboyne & Glentannar (0 miles)

Aboyne, former parish, Aboyne & Glentannar (0.61 miles)

Lady Wood, Aboyne & Glentanar (1.36 miles)

St Machar's Well, Aboyne & Glentanar (1.8 miles)

Cathair Mochrieha, Aboyne and Glentanar (1.8 miles)

Object Classification

Vegetation

Is linear feature?

No

Notes

Half way between Aboyne Castle and Aboyne old parish kirk is the site of 'Skeulan Tree' and 'the Skeulan Well'. According to Mackinlay (1914, 59), 'The tree and the well were held in much reverence on account of their association with the saint' - i.e. Adomnán, a version of whose name is held to be contained in 'Skeulan'. While this may seem a rather severe mangling of the name, it is not completely implausible(Adomnán > Eunán, Eunán > Eulan, Sanct Eulan > Skeulan are not absolutely preposterous sound-changes), in addition to which we have the eighteenth-century testimony of Thomas Innes, whose Civil and Ecclesiastical History (1853) p. 301, says, ‘It will appear ... that I have insisted too long upon S. Adamnan; but ... the author of these memoirs, born in a parish anciently devoted to the memory of this holy man, and still preservaning a monument of him, well known to all the neighbourhood by the name of S. Eunan’s Well and S. Eunan’s Tree, thought it a duty to be at some more pains to illustrate his life and actions.’ NMRS records: 'Both tree and well were held in great veneration but the well was drained away by 1865, leaving no trace, and the tree, which had been a gigantic ash, said to be many centuries old, remained only as a badly decayed trunk.' Finally OS surveyors recorded no trace of the tree or the well in 1972.

http://canmore.rcahms.gov.uk/

Relationships with other parishes

Within Aboyne & Glentanar, parish

Within Aboyne, former parish, Aboyne & Glentannar

Relationships with other places

Adjacent Skeulan Well, Aboyne, Aboyne & Glentannar