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The Skerries - click image or here to access interactive guide
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The Skerries as depicted in or before 1823 by local author Hugh Hughes
in his compilation of views in Wales Beauties of Cambria

The Skerries as depicted by Rev. G.J. Freeman who visited in 1824

The History, Archaeology and Geology of the Skerries islands situated off the coast of North- West Anglesey, North Wales

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The association of the Islands with Gruffydd ap Cynan.
He was Prince of Gwynedd who lived c.1055-1137, and who reigned unchallenged over Gwynedd (and perhaps rather further), from the early 12th century until his death. The image is not known for certain to be intended to represent him but is roughly contemporary.
The Mediaeval history of the Islands.
Their importance in the earliest times, among the temporalities of the Bishops of Bangor, stems mainly from their use as a fishery. The image is of a page from the Extent of North Wales, a record of liabilities for taxation compiled in 1352 for Edward III. A copy of this Extent from two inferior sources, British Museum Harleian MSS 696 and 4776, is included in the Record of Caernarvon printed in 1838 for the Record Commission, by the British Museum's Principal Librarian Sir Henry Ellis. In this Extent are several original deeds relating to holdings on the Skerries islands. The islands were also an important aid to navigation for coasting sailors long before the first lighthouse was built
The shipwreck of the Royal Yacht Mary in 1675.
The image is a supposed view of the Mary by artist Gordon Grant for Henry B. Culver in his Forty Famous Ships published by Doubleday, Doran & Co. in 1936. Though there are several such reconstructions of the yacht, they are all more or less hypothetical and differ among themselves as to details
The history of the private lighthouses which stood on the islands from 1717 to 1841. There was formerly disagreement as to whether the tower shown, as it appears in Lewis Morris's book Plans of Harbours in Wales, was actually the original Skerries lighthouse or a view of one proposed by Morris for Flatholm or perhaps Grassholm island. This appears now to have been resolved with the rediscovery in the same author's MS volume Cambria's Coasting Pilot 1739-42 of a view explicitly of the Skerries tower corresponding closely to the former image.
The history of the Trinity House lighthouse on the Skerries from 1841 to the present.
The photo is due to the late Mr J.O.Hughes of Llaneilian and dates from before 1903 when the sector light was added to the lighthouse structure.
Actual and potential archaeological features on the islands. These include a C18th well, early cairns, a C18th bridge, sets of rock-cut and stone steps, a C18th cottage and the ruins of two dry-stone buildings at the head of a rustic harbour.

The historical geology of the Islands. This is principally an account of the work of Edward Greenly (1861-1951, portrait opposite) whose great work Memoir of the Geology of Anglesey 1919 with associated geological map of the Skerries, remains a standard reference
More recent developments.The image is of a particuarly impressive granitoid boulder in the grit immediately below the lighthouse on the eastern side, above the palaeozoic dyke. The late Prof. Dennis Wood believed that the linear striae on the boulder, curving round to vanish in the grit, might be due to glacial abrasion, as with recent morainic boulders and roches moutonee. If so, this would imply the possibility of the granitoid boulder being contemporary with one of the three Proterozoic glacial eras, all prior to 570 Myr BP.