St. Andrews Cathedral dominated the history of the medieval church in Scotland from its construction in the 12th century until the Protestant Reformation in 1560. A church had occupied this site since the 8th century when the relics of St. Andrews were supposedly brought here. Sadly this Catholic Church was destroyed Protestant reformers who fought against the Catholic leadership in the 1500s.
This picture was taken facing the original altar. You can see the stones in front of the photograph that are overshadowed by the high walls.
You are now looking at one end of the great cathedral to the other end. This is the entrance where most would have entered. These churches were massive in size (you can see one that is still standing previous shown in my blogs under the Manchester Cathedral) and stone columns had to be close enough together to hold up the ceiling. If you look at the oval shaped stones still in the ground at the forefront of this picture you will see the original foundations of the columns.
As you can tell from this picture the property became a graveyard with tombstones from previous centuries.
From the ruins of the St. Cathedral you can see the ruins of the St. Andrews castle. This castle was destroyed in the same conflict that destroyed the St. Andrews Cathedral but this time it was the Catholics who destroyed the castle, captured the renegade Scottish protestants (who were seen as English sympathizers) and burned their leader, George Wishart, at the stake.
In the background of this picture is the beach shown in the blog posted previous to this where the beach scene from the movie “Chariots of Fire” was filmed. Right next and behind it is the oldest golf course in the world, St. Andrews golf course.
Both St. Andrews Castle and Cathedral are located on a small peninsula of Scotland on the North Sea. This is a view from St. Andrews Cathedral showing the outer wall and the estuary that flows nearby. As you can see it is low tide when this picture was taken.
I took a lot of pictures but the last one I will show are the remaining towers of the Cathedral seen over the walls of the church grounds.