The former Cathedral of St Andrew is located near the cost at St Andrews in the peninsula of Fife in eastern Scotland.

The eastern arm of the cathedral as begun in 1160-62 was set out with an aisleless easternmost section of two bays and an aisled section of six bays, with the chapels at the aisle ends walled off from the presbytery. Four-bay transepts with an eastern chapel aisle to each projected on either side of the crossing, west of which was a long nave of twelve aisled bays in its final form, but which was initially planned to have at least fourteen bays.

Externally, the bays were demarcated by slender pilaster buttresses, which emerge from within a horizontally continuous base course. All elements were framed by thin engaged or en-délit shafts – the longer ones having shaft rings – and, where appropriate, by wall arches. The pilasters and angle turrets of the presbytery also have such shafts at their junction with the wall. At the lower levels the capitals to the shafts are predominantly of attenuated crocket form, and excavated fragments suggest that the arcade capitals were also decorated with crockets, though there were also water-leaf forms to some of the lesser capitals.

The main elements of the Cathedral that survived abandonment after the Reformation include the east gable wall and some lower walling and partly reconstructed pier fragments of the eastern limb; arcade level walling on the south and west sides of the south transept and along the south side of the nave; and almost half of the west front of the 1270s. A number of stones now displayed in the site museum are also included here, though their origins are uncertain, having been found in various locations in St Andrews.

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The Melrose Chronicle records that in 1162 a new church was founded at St Andrews by Bishop Arnold (1160-62), who had previously been abbot of Kelso. As the cathedral church of Scotland’s most important bishop, and as the home of its leading community of Augustinian Canons, St Andrews was of the highest significance for the Scottish Church. The new building was therefore conceived on a scale intended to leave neither the archbishops of York, who attempted to claim authority over the Scottish Church, nor his fellow Scottish bishops in any doubt as to its bishop’s standing and willingness to assert his seniority. The nave was nearing completion in the 1270s, when Scotichronicon says the west front was blown down in a storm, perhaps the same storm that damaged Arbroath Abbey in 1272. The western bays were then rebuilt by Bishop William Wishart (1271–79), and the whole cathedral was eventually dedicated on 5 July 1318.

A further extended period of rebuilding was necessitated by a major fire in 1378. The inclusion of the cathedral as ‘santandroys’ in the list of his works inscribed at Melrose Abbey by the Paris-born mason John Morow suggests that Morow’s contribution was part of the work that had to be initiated after that fire. Scotichronicon recorded that Prior Stephen Pay (1363–86) repaired the roof and stonework and rebuilt two piers on the south side of the nave, and that the work on the nave was continued by his successor, Prior Robert de Montrose (1386–94), who completed the work up to the rafters and covered the roof.

Scotichronicon records that on 13 January 1409/10 a storm blew down the south transept gable, damaging the dormitory, parlour and chapter house, fatally wounding the Sub-Prior, Thomas de Cupar, who was in the chapter house at the time.

The cathedral was 'cleansed' (despoiled) by the reformers in 1559, and soon after the Reformation Parliament of 1560 orders were given for it to be unroofed, after which the bishop used the nearby parish church of Holy Trinty as his cathedral. The abandoned cathedral's building materials were quickly put to other uses, and by 1693 the depiction of it in Slezer's Theatrum Scotiae shows that it was in much the same condition as now. Between 1837 and 1842 there was discussion as to how far the crown was responsible for the upkeep of the remaining fabric, with full responsibility eventually being accepted.

The original design appears to have been a mixture of well-established and new ideas. The east gable wall, which terminated the axis down the length of the building, had three tiers of triplets of round-headed windows, the two upper tiers being pierced by mural passages. This is a type of composition that harks back to the transept gable walls of the Benedictine cathedral priories of the eastern counties, dating from as early as the last decades of the eleventh century, as at Ely and Norwich. However the idea had undergone more recent reinterpretation at the hands of the northern English Cistercians, as demonstrated by the north transept of Kirkstall Abbey in Yorkshire of the 1150s, and it was presumably from northern England that the idea was taken for St Andrews. The upper tiers were superseded by a single large window after the fire of 1378.

The plan can perhaps be understood as a marrying of the arrangement seen in the eastern parts of Jedburgh Abbey, which had itself probably drawn inspiration from Southwell Minster, with the liturgical advantages of the much longer eastern arm of such as Durham Cathedral. The original liturgical arrangements are likely to have located the presbytery in the salient rectangular easternmost section, where light would fall on the high altar from windows on three sides; this was to the east of a choir for the canons, and presbytery and choir together may be assumed to have been initially contained within the architecturally distinct eastern limb of the building. As part of repairs carried out after a fire in 1378, however, it seems that the aisle-less eastern section may have been adapted as a relic chapel, which meant that the presbytery and choir were moved westwards, the latter extending to below the crossing, with the rood screen and pulpitum in the east bay of the nave. It is unlikely that this would have been the original intention, however, and certainly at Arbroath Abbey, where the plan was to follow closely that of St Andrews, the base of the altar is still to be seen within the aisle-less easternmost section.

There is evidence of several adjustments to the design in the course of the extended building operation. The first of these may have been at the clearstorey level of the presbytery, the design of which made allowance for the wall arch of a quadripartite stone vault. The lower side arches of the inner arcade were pointed, as were the taller blind arches that flanked the windows externally, and this was probably the first use of pointed arches at the cathedral. By this stage water-leaf capitals appear to be used more widely.

Along the south nave wall there are a series of modifications to the detailing of wall shafts and windows, but the most significant change in the nave was evidently in the relative proportions of the three storeys of the central vessel. Although the stubs of the triforium and clearstorey stages date from the rebuilding after a fire in 1378, and their proportions may not necessarily precisely reflect those of the church as it was completed in the 1270s, the arcade as built in the late thirteenth century was so tall that it left space for a triforium and clearstorey of no more than moderate size. It can also be seen that, unlike in the presbytery, there was no vaulting over the central vessel of the nave. If the west respond reflects the form of the arcade piers, the piers were still of octofoil clustered-shaft type, as they were in the eastern limb; but here it was the diagonal shafts that were keeled, while the cardinal shafts were rounded. There is in addition a band of dogtooth on each side of the respond shafts, though there is unlikely to have been scope for anything of the kind in the piers themselves. At the centre of the west front is the processional doorway, flanking which externally were semi-octagonal buttresses; the wall at the west end of the south aisle was blind, but decorated with two tiers of decorative arcading. The blind arcading and upper tier of windows directly above the central doorway, however, belong to the rebuilding that followed the fire of 1378. A deep vaulted porch was formed across the west front, within the shell of the abandoned west bays of the nave.

Internally there was decorative arcading around the lower walls of the presbytery; this was removed in the re-ordering after 1378, though, since that re-ordering involved raising the floor levels, the arcade bases were retained and came back into view when the floor was lost. A run of arcading survives in the south transept, and it can be assumed from what is seen there, together with slight traces of capitals and arches in the east wall, that the presbytery arcading was similarly of intersecting form. Intersecting arcading might seem a rather retardataire feature by the 1160s, though it was to continue in favour to the end of the century, as in the north nave aisle of Holyrood Abbey and the chapter house at Dryburgh Abbey.

Within the choir, the reconstructed pier fragments are of octofoil clustered-shaft type, the major shafts on the cardinal axes being nibbed, a variant of keeling, while the shafts on the diagonal axes are rounded. A taste for keeled piers had probably been brought by the Cistercians from their first home in eastern France to northern England, and thence to Scotland. They are to be seen in the monastic buildings at the Burgundian Cistercian abbeys of Fontenay and Pontigny, and by perhaps the later 1150s large-scale variants on the type were being used in the western bays of the nave at the Cistercian abbey of Kirkstall. They were then used in two architectural projects of Archbishop Roger of Pont l’Evêque of York (1154–81) at York and Ripon. Despite the fact that York’s archbishops were attempting to impose their authority over the Scottish Church, it is striking that the source of several of the ideas that found expression at St Andrews in the course of the twelfth century is to be found in the archdiocese of York. The likely debts are to the destroyed choir of York Minster itself, possibly started soon after Roger’s election and where only a few fragments survive, and there are also parallels with the archbishop’s collegiate church of Ripon. Since work at the latter was probably initiated no earlier than the 1170s it is of only secondary significance for St Andrews, but is seen there provides supporting evidence for an active sharing of ideas between Archbishop Roger’s workshops and that at St Andrews. Similarities with Ripon are seen in the shared use of clustered-shaft piers and in the way that Ripon’s high vault shafts of the choir have nibbing related to that found on the piers at St Andrews.

The relative proportions of the three storeys in the choir may have been a continuation of those in the aisle-less presbytery, with a tall gallery stage at mid-height and a shorter clerestorey above. Yet later churches such as Tynemouth Priory in Northumberland demonstrate that the relative proportions of the storeys in an aisled choir need not be the same as those of an adjacent aisleless presbytery. Nevertheless, the Scottish building that appears to have most closely followed St Andrews is the nave of Jedburgh Abbey (Roxburghshire), where there is a very tall gallery. Also of significance is the likelihood that York Minster had a tall gallery.

The principal survivors of the post-1378 campaign of rebuilding are the upper parts of the west front, the stubs of the rebuilt triforium and clearstorey, and the reconstructed lowest courses of a number of arcade pier bases. In all of this there are certain aspects that could show a degree of Continental inspiration resulting from the presence of the Paris-born mason John Morow (commemorated by an inscription at Melrose Abbey). Further repairs were required after the collapse of the south transept gable in 1409/10, but the only relic of these is the lower part of the south respond of the arcade on the east side of the south transept. This is of semi-circular section, suggesting that the south transept arcade must have been at least partly rebuilt with cylindrical piers.

The loose sculptural fragments show a high quality of work and elaborate decorative treatment such as the point-to-point chevron which required more effort to create the undercutting. This would have underscored the status of the project.