St AndrewsCastle Exhibition.
This exhibition features some of the events and the people involved during the castle's long history.
St Andrews Castle was the home of the bishops of St Andrews. The site has been fortified since at least the 1190s. However, most of what we see today was built between 1380 and 1560.
The Castle was the scene of major events in Scottish history. In 1452 the future King James III was born here. Nearly a century later, in 1546, one of the most powerful men in Scotland,
George Wishart was burnt at the stake for his protestant views, outside the castle, then Cardinal David Beaton, was murdered in in retaliation by a group of Protestant noblemen.
The Cardinal's assassins then occupied St Andrews Castle for over a year. They eventually surrendered when bombarded by ships sent from France. During the 1546-47 siege, attacking forces tried to capture the Castle by mining under the walls. The resulting mine still survives, and is the best preserved sixteenth-century siege mine in Europe. Unfortunately they are currently closed after a part of thetunnels collapsed a few weeks ago.
