St Andrews Castle

St Andrews Castle

The bishops' castle by the sea

On a rocky headland above the North Sea, in the famous old town of St Andrews in Fife, stand the ruins of St Andrews Castle. This was no ordinary fortress: it was the home and stronghold of the bishops — and later archbishops — of St Andrews, who were the most powerful churchmen in all of medieval Scotland. From the late thirteenth century onwards, these great church leaders lived here in a castle that was part palace, part prison and part fortress, with the waves crashing against the cliffs below.

The bottle dungeon

St Andrews Castle is famous for one of the most dreadful prisons in Scotland: the "bottle dungeon." It is a deep pit cut down into the solid rock, shaped exactly like a bottle, narrow at the neck and wider below. A prisoner could only be lowered in by rope through the small opening at the top, and once inside there was no way to climb out. Cold, dark and airless, it was a place from which escape was impossible, and several prisoners are known to have died there.

A castle of the Reformation

In the 1540s St Andrews Castle was at the very centre of one of the most dramatic events in Scottish history: the Reformation, the great religious struggle between the old Catholic Church and the new Protestant faith. In 1546 the powerful Cardinal David Beaton had a Protestant preacher named George Wishart burned at the stake just outside the castle. In revenge, a group of Protestant lairds broke in, killed the cardinal, and seized the castle for themselves.

They held it for many months against the cardinal's supporters. Among those inside was John Knox, who would go on to become the most famous leader of the Scottish Reformation. When the castle finally fell — with the help of French ships and soldiers — Knox was captured and forced to row as a prisoner in a French galley for nearly two years.

The mine and the counter-mine

During that long siege, the attackers tried to break into the castle by digging a tunnel, called a "mine," through the rock to bring down the walls. The defenders dug a tunnel of their own — a "counter-mine" — to find and stop them underground. Astonishingly, both tunnels survive, and today visitors can crawl through these narrow, dripping passages and see exactly where the two digging teams almost met beneath the earth. It is one of the best places in Britain to experience medieval siege warfare for yourself.

Visiting today

Today St Andrews Castle is a striking ruin on its sea-cliff, close to the town's even larger ruined cathedral. Visitors can peer down into the terrible bottle dungeon, explore the mine and counter-mine, and stand on the walls where bishops once ruled and the Reformation once raged. Few small castles hold so much history within their broken walls.