By Dan Walsh
The death has occurred of well-known author and historian Helen Skrine, who fell asleep peacefully at her home, Butlerstown, Tomhaggard, surrounded by her four daughters. She was in her 95th year.
Helen Skrine grew up in Butlerstown, spent two years in London with the BBC, and later many years in Malaysia where she lived with her late husband John Skrine, a lawyer. She started writing the manuscript about her family and her Wexford roots about 30 years ago. During the 1980s she was secretary and later president of the Wexford Historical Society for some years
She is the author of an acclaimed 200-page hardback memoir, The Boxwells of Butlerstown Castle, a lineage of the Boxwell, Harvey, Skrine, Stokes and St Leger families, that featured on RTE’s Nationwide earlier this year.
In the book, Helen tells in descriptive, colourful, and entertaining prose about her experiences, and the history of her famous family in the 1798 Rebellion, the Irish War of Independence, World War II, and the bleak 1950s living in a big house across the yard from the historic Butlerstown Castle on a 100-acre farm.
FUNERAL ARRANGEMENTS; Reposing at her residence for family and close friends on Thursday from 2pm to 7pm. Funeral Service for Helen will take place in St. Enoch’s Church, Killinick, on Saturday at 12 noon, followed by burial afterwards in Ishartmon graveyard. “At Rest”
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