Ruins of Cathedral of Saint Andrew

Eight centuries of history in stone — this fine art photograph of the ruins of the Cathedral of Saint Andrew captures one of the most atmospheric and haunting sites in Scotland, the skeletal remains of what was once the largest cathedral in the country, standing open to the sky above the ancient town of St Andrews on the Fife coast. The Cathedral of Saint Andrew was founded in 1158 and consecrated in 1318 in the presence of Robert the Bruce, and for nearly two centuries it was the mother church of the Scottish Catholic Church and one of the great pilgrimage destinations of medieval Europe. Its destruction came during the Scottish Reformation in 1559, when the cathedral was stripped of its furnishings and left to fall into ruin, its stone gradually quarried for building material by the townspeople below. What remains today is extraordinary: the great east gable wall still standing to its full height, the south wall of the nave with its rows of Romanesque arches, and the west towers rising against the sea wind and the wide Fife sky. This photograph finds the beauty and the melancholy of the place — the warm sandstone, the empty arches, the grass growing where the nave floor once was. Printed on Fuji Crystal Archive paper with optional acrylic glass or Alu-Dibond mounting for a gallery-quality finish.