I met a friend recently who remarked that he had seen me a few days before striding down Lummox’s Hill. Lummox’s Hill (6)? Where on earth was Lummox’s Hill? I was taken aback. No, I couldn’t for the life of me remember - that is if I ever knew where this oddly named hill was located. This little incident set me thinking about old Skerries place names - unknown to the younger generation and indeed in the process of being forgotten even by those of my own.

Is Walker’s Corner (3), the hiring corner, still remembered? Do people still talk of the Bay Wall (2) or the White Wall (5) or the Gooseacre (7)?

Over the way from Walker’s Corner is the Bay Wall. Miss Alice McGuinness whose cottage forms part of it tells me that the reason why it is so called is that the Bay could be seen from it at one time.

That part of Thomas Hand Street extending from there to the  Monument  was and is still called Cross Street (1), and before that Jem Hynes' Street. Who Jem was or whence he came or what his claim was, we do not know.

I well remember when the present Church Street was called Chapel Street (4) - a name that survived from the time when there was, in fact, a chapel rather than a church there.  

Image is adapted from O.S. photograph taken from a height of 6km. in the year 2000.

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