Crail Castle Chapel

Crail Castle Chapel

There appears to have been a castle at Crail by the middle of the twelfth century. In 1359 the castle chapel is described as being dedicated to St Ruffinus – which is thought to be a Latinised form of St Maolrubha (an early medieval saint who was popular in north-west Scotland). There are a number of references to the chapel at Crail Castle in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, including in 1512 when a rent from Drumrack was being used ‘to support divine service in the chapel of St Maolrubha in the castle of Crail’. By the time of the Reformation the castle had fallen into disrepair and in 1563 David Spens of Wormistoun obtained permission to rebuild it. The castle chapel is briefly mentioned in 1620 but then slips out of the written record. By the early eighteenth century Crail Castle was itself in ruins. Today a small section of masonry in Castle Garden is all that remains of this former residence and fortification.

sacredlandscapesoffife

12th Century?

Bess Rhodes

Site

206

06/10/2021

09/26/2023 02:41:08 pm

(1) Anne Turner Simpson and Sylvia Stevenson, Historic Crail: The Archaeological Implications of Development (1981), p. 7. (2) Simon Taylor and Gilbert Márkus, The Place-Names of Fife (5 vols, Donington, 2006-2012), vol. 3, pp. 182-183. (3) Historic Environment Scotland, Canmore entry for ‘Crail Castle’: https://canmore.org.uk/site/70949/crail-castle [Accessed 21 September 2021].

cm x cm x cm

current,56.258501131087236,-2.6258321705856917;

Crail Castle Chapel

TEXT

Building

438

Before 1560

Catholic

Crail