Saints in Scottish Place-Names
Funded by a Leverhulme Trust Project Grant
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.
Relationships with other parishes
Within Aboyne & Glentanar, parish
Relationships with other places
Names
1 head-name linked to this place ?Skeulan Tree
Head name
Skeulan Tree
Place
Skeulan Tree, Aboyne - Aboyne & Glentannar
Certainty that this name applies to this place
Certain
The status of this name is
Obsolete
Is this a current OS form? ?
No
Is this the original referent of the place?
Yes
Is the association of this name to this object hypothetical?
No
Skeulan Tree 1843, OS 6 inch first edn.
Historic formSkeulan Tree Head nameSkeulan Tree PlaceSkeulan Tree, Aboyne - Aboyne & Glentannar Certainty that this name applies to this placeCertain SourceOS 6 inch first edn. Date of citation1843 x 1882 Notes on the context of this place-nameMid to late 19th c. |
Source code
OS 6 inch first edn.
Source title
Ordnance Survey 6 Inch to the Mile, First Edition
Notes
Mid to late 19th c.
Place-name data
The place-name data featured in this resource is copyright of the University of Glasgow.
Map Layers
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Default map:
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Satellite map:
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Satellite map with labels:
Base map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, CC-BY-SA, Imagery © Mapbox
Modern OS map:
Ordnance Survey OpenData. Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right (2010)
OS 1840-1880 map:
National Library of Scotland Historic Maps
OS 1920-1933 map:
National Library of Scotland Historic Maps
