St Andrews Cathedral

The name

People

• 

  Robert the Bruce

  King of Scots, present at the cathedral's consecration in 1318

• 

  John Knox

  Reformer whose preaching incited the mob that ransacked the cathedral in 1559

• R

  St Rule (St Regulus)

  Saint credited by legend with bringing relics of St Andrew to the area from Patras in Greece

• A

  The Augustinian Canons (St Andrews Cathedral Priory)

  The community that served the cathedral, successors to the Culdees of the Celtic church

• O

  Old Tom Morris and Young Tom Morris

  Pioneering golfers buried in the cathedral burial ground

Cultural influences

• The cathedral superseded the much smaller Romanesque church of St Rule and the even older Culdee site of St Mary on the Rock, marking the shift from the early Celtic church to the organised medieval Catholic Church in Scotland.

• Its surviving fabric is partly Norman and partly Early Scottish (Gothic), reflecting the long span of its construction from 1158 into the 14th century.

• As the seat of the Archdiocese of St Andrews and the destination of pilgrims venerating the relics of St Andrew, it was the ecclesiastical heart of medieval Scotland until the Reformation.

Connections

• R

  St Rule's Tower (Church of St Regulus)

  Earlier 11th/12th-century church within the cathedral grounds, retained to allow worship during construction; its tall tower still stands

• 

  Church of St Mary on the Rock

  Older Culdee religious site to the east that became a collegiate church

• A

  St Andrews Cathedral Priory

  The Augustinian community that served the cathedral; surviving traces include the priory wall and the archways known as The Pends

• R

  Relics of St Andrew

  The Apostle's relics, said to have been brought to the site, made it a major pilgrimage centre

In culture

• According to legend, King Robert the Bruce rode his horse up the aisle at the cathedral's consecration in 1318.

What to look for

• St Rule's Tower

  St Rule's Tower — a tall (33 m / 108 ft) grey sandstone ashlar tower predating the cathedral, built to house the relics of St Andrew and long a land- and sea-mark guiding pilgrims; a stone spiral staircase was inserted in the 18th century.

• The standing gables

  The surviving gables and walls — the east and west gables, much of the south wall of the nave, and the west wall of the south transept, showing both Norman and Early Scottish work.

• The turf ground-plan

  The ground-plan of the church cut out in the turf, marking the full 119 m extent of the lost building.

• The Pends

  The Pends — the surviving archways of the priory precinct — and portions of the priory wall.

• The golfers' graves

  The burial ground, resting place of figures including the golfers Old and Young Tom Morris.

Standing there

• The lost building can still be read from the ruins — the great surviving gables of the tall east and west walls and the south nave wall — and from the full ground-plan cut into the turf, which traces the largest church ever built in Scotland, about 119 metres end to end, now open to the Fife sky and sea air.
• Beside the cathedral rises St Rule's Tower, a slender 33-metre grey sandstone tower older than the cathedral itself; climb its inserted stone spiral stair and it still commands the view it was built to give — town, harbour, open sea and countryside — the land- and sea-mark that once guided pilgrims to St Andrew's relics.
• Today the precinct is a walled burial ground threaded by the surviving priory wall and the archways called The Pends, headstones standing where the cloisters were — among them the golfers Old and Young Tom Morris — the whole site quiet, grassy and salt-weathered above the North Sea.
• Before 1559 this was the ecclesiastical heart of medieval Scotland — a vast roofed cathedral filled with the sung Latin liturgy of its Augustinian canons, candlelight, incense and the press of pilgrims come to venerate the relics of the Apostle Andrew at the seat of Scotland's archbishops.
• The emptiness itself is the experience: in June 1559 a Protestant mob roused by John Knox's preaching stripped and wrecked the interior, and within a generation the central tower fell and townspeople carried off the stone for building — so the bare gables and turf-cut plan are the visible record of the Reformation's force.