7 - Living in the Late Medieval Town of St Andrews

Summary

PILGRIMS approaching St Andrews from the south-west in the late fifteenth century saw a place dominated by spires and towers, a place of religious piety and power and of higher learning. But between the impressive stone buildings of church and university lay the dwellings and properties of the ordinary inhabitants of the town. As the pilgrims drew closer, evidence of these people's lives began to appear. The Priory Acres, crofts of agricultural land around the edges of the city, were leased out to St Andrews burgesses from at least 1434, and had probably been worked by them long before that. Some crofts lay just outside the town gates at the end of Market Street and South Street, in the areas known as Argyll and Dunsy dubs. Argyll, one of the few urban suburbs in medieval Scotland, also had homes and dwellings, with some properties stretching from Argyll Street down to the water lade behind it3 Many people living here were craftworkers. As the pilgrims travelled towards the town, the reek and smoke of coal feeding hammermen's forges assailed the nose and eyes, while the sound of metal tools shaping nails, bars, horseshoes and other items of everyday life assaulted the ears. Crossing the Cowgait (City Road) and passing through the impressive gate (the West Port) into South Street, the pilgrims entered the western end and newest part of St Andrews, built up in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries during the town's final phase of expansion. A little further along on the north side of South Street, and encroaching on the street itself, were the churchyard and fine stone building and tower of the parish kirk, the collegiate church of Holy Trinity, founded in 1410 just before the university and a symbol of the townspeople's own confidence and identity.

By the late fifteenth century, St Andrews had achieved its final medieval layout. Major building projects continued, with two new colleges established, the archbishop's castle strengthened and then partially destroyed, and the priory precinct wall doubled in height. The elevation of the see of St Andrews to an archbishopric in 1472 had brought even more status to the city, home to the relics of the kingdom's patron saint and one of its most important pilgrimage sites.