Who Killed The Witch Lake Eight?

St Andrews’ early modern murder mystery

In 1987, workmen Thomas Campbell and Ernie Price were digging a garden when their shovels struck something more sinister than soil: human skeletons. Edwina Proudfoot — a local archaeologist and now former director of St Andrews Heritage Services — was called in to investigate, uncovering eight intact skeletons. The eerie discovery fueled a long-standing question: Is Step Rock, formerly known as ‘Witch Lake’, haunted by St Andrean witches?

Just a hop over from the penguins at St Andrews Aquarium and a skip down from the cajun fries of Saint Sizzle lies the Step Rock tidal pool. Unlike its twin over on Castle Sands, the 300-by-100-foot pool is no longer available for public use. But in its heyday, the ‘Steppie’ was perhaps a midcentury 601 — a place to see and be seen. Originally a Victorian bathing spot for men and boys, the austere tidal pool transformed into the Grand Step Rock Complex in the 1930s, lying at the heart of St Andrews social life. 

Yet long before Step Rock was a destination for postwar amusement — or even a men's-only retreat  — local legend whispered that the pool possessed a more ominous history, one tied to Reformation-era witch trials. Centuries before the skeletal discoveries of the 1980s, the great storm of 1856 ravaged the Fife coastline, causing significant coastal erosion at Step Rock and exposing intact human skeletons within the tide pool. This revelation was the basis for the witchy St Andrean legend.

Step Rock sits just down from Witch Hill, the current site of Martyr’s Monument. It was on this very mound that accused women burned at the stake during the Scottish Witch Trials of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Before facing the flames at the stake, the locals tied the accused witches' thumbs to their opposite toes and threw them into the sea to test if they ‘swum’. If they floated, they were deemed guilty of witchcraft and dragged to Witch Hill. If they drowned, they were proclaimed innocent — though at the cost of their lives. Thus, the numerous remains uncovered by Step Rock were presumed to be the bodies of said ‘innocent’ murdered witches that encountered this grim end.

But how much truth can be found in this unsettling account? While the legend of witches' skeletons at Step Rock remains compelling, historical evidence tells a different story. Preservation Trust Archives suggest the story of Step Rock witches is no more than myth. “The most sexy and interesting answer is, obviously, witches,” Douglas Spiers, the Lead Archaeologist for the Fife Council, said. “But it’s also the least likely.” More common than drowning accused witches was the practice of “garrotting” them before burning — or, more accurately, “lightly toasting” them. While Spiers acknowledges that accused witches may be buried in and around St Andrews, he points out that distinguishing them from other burials would be practically impossible. Furthermore, the discovery of children’s skeletons at Step Rock further undermines the witch theory — young children were seldom accused of sorcery. 

Instead, most local archaeologists today conjecture that the bones at Step Rock belonged to plague victims. St Andrews saw at least six plagues during its witch trials, resulting in the death of hundreds of residents. East Coast port towns affected by the plague had to dispose of plague corpses swiftly to prevent further contamination. St Andrews victims were often buried off-the-record in mass plague pits beneath the cliffs of the Scores, right by Step Rock. The extent of coastal storms, including the storm of 1856, regularly cause rockfalls and erosion at the burial sites, uncovering skeletal remains. 

While Spiers favours the plague theory, he doesn’t discredit other more far-fetched answers. Few explanations exist for burials outside of consecrated church grounds — this departure from religious practice would have been highly unusual, if not scandalous, for the time. “It's not impossible [the bodies] are sixteenth century martyrs,” like Reformation the dissidents Patrick Hamilton (of North Street ‘PH’ fame), Henry Forrest, George Wishart, and Walter Myln — four men honoured by the Martyr’s Monument. Another possibility could involve early modern shipwrecks. They were quite common in St Andrews, and the drowned bodies of strangers were often placed in mass graves along the shore rather than in consecrated churchyards. Some of Step Rock’s skeletons, Spiers said, might belong to those seafarers. Other possibilities might include victims of infanticide or suicide. 

Is there any definitive way to know the truth? “None of the skeletons have ever been examined,” Spiers notes. “And newspaper reports don’t say what they did with the bones.” Moreover, the coastal landscape has changed significantly over the last 500 years. Coastal erosion, storms, and land reclamation make it difficult to analyse accurately. Carbon dating the skeletons would cost at least £400 — a sum unlikely to be raised in the name of the Step Rock skeletons. “Some of these bones could be from the Bronze Age, and next to them, we could easily have a seventeenth century witch, and then an eighteenth century drowned crew from a shipwreck,” Spiers muses. “There [have been] an awful lot of [bodies] across St Andrews […] finding dead people in St Andrews is the bane of my life; we uncover them every year.” Without a controlled, thorough excavation, no explanation can be provided. 

Be it witches, plague victims, or adrift seafarers, Step Rock’s tidal pool has potentially borne witness to some of the goriest chapters of St Andrews’ early-modern history. Try not to think about the corpses next time you’re down at Step Rock ordering a Saint Sizzle cheeseburger — it might spoil your appetite. 

This article is largely based on social history archives courtesy of the St Andrews Preservation Trust.

Illustration by Isabelle Holloway