St Andrews Castle St Andrews and St Leonards, Scotland

Text courtesy of Historic Environment Scotland. © Crown Copyright, reprinted under the Open Government License.

The monument consists of the surviving portions of St Andrews Castle and the areas likely to have been occupied by its outer courtyards.

St Andrews Castle is a multi-period, composite, structure of medieval and Renaissance style, built by the Bishops and Archbishops of St Andrews. It was started c.1200, but the matrix of what is now seen is a pentagonal courtyard castle built by Bishop Walter Traill in the years around 1400, following the destruction of its predecessor in the Wars of Independence. Artillery blockhouses were built to replace the outer angle towers in the early 16th century, and fragments remain at the SW corner.

These were largely destroyed in the siege which followed the murder of Cardinal Beaton in 1546, during which siege a mine and counter-mine were dug beneath the ditch. The last major addition was the rebuilding of the entrance front in the 1550s by Archbishop Hamilton, in an advanced early-Renaissance style. The castle is now extensively ruined, with much of the E range, which included the hall, having fallen over the sea-cliff.

The area to be scheduled is defined by sea-cliffs to the N and E, by the boundary with Castlecliff House to the W, and by the boundary wall along the Scores to the S, and includes the remains of the castle and the areas of its outer courtyards to the W and S. It measures a maximum of 120m WSW-ENE by 115m NW-SE, as marked in red on the accompanying map extract.