Spynie Palace
| Spynie Palace | |
|---|---|
| Spynie, Nr Elgin, Moray, Scotland | |
 |
|
| Coordinates | 57°40′34″N 03°17′29″W / 57.67611°N 3.29139°W |
| Type | Keep with curtain wall |
| Height | 22 metres |
| Site information | |
| Owner | Historic Scotland |
| Open to the public |
Yes |
| Condition | Ruin |
| Site history | |
| Built |
1st c1150 2nd c1250 |
| Built by | Bishop of Moray |
| In use | c1150 – 1689 |
| Materials | Sandstone |
| Events | besieged 1640 and 1645 |
Spynie Palace, also known as Spynie Castle, was the fortified seat of the Bishops of Moray for about 500 years. The founding of the palace dates back to the late 12th Century. It is situated about 500m from the location of the first officially settled Cathedral Church of the Diocese of Moray, in present-day Spynie Churchyard. For most of its occupied history, the castle was not described as a palace — this term first appeared in the Registry of Moray in a writ of 1524.
The beginnings of the Bishopric of Moray are unclear. The first mention of a bishop was Gregoir whose name appeared on several royal charters in the 1120s. The early Bishops of Moray had no fixed abode but moved between houses at Birnie, Kinneddar and Spynie. In 1172, King William I, the Lion, made grants to the church of the Holy Trinity of the Bishopric of Moray and to Bishop Simon de Tosny. Formal permission for the permanent move to Spynie was given by Pope Innocent III to Bishop Bricius de Douglas in April 1206 and the transfer was probably made by 1208. Bishop Bricius attended the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 and may have appealed to Innocent to transfer the See of Moray to Elgin. However, he certainly wrote to him requesting the move before July 1216. The cathedral church at Spynie was considered vulnerable to attack and too far from the market. Elgin with its Royal castle would have been seen as a better option. Bricius did not live to see the changes made, dying in 1222, but his successor, Bishop Andrew of Moray carried them out. Although the See of Moray was transferred to the Church of the Holy Trinity in Elgin on 19 July 1224, the Bishop of Moray's episcopal palace remained at Spynie.
The first castle was a wooden structure built in the late 12th century and was revealed in excavations carried out between 1986 and 1994. The excavated evidence suggests that the buildings were surrounded by a rectangular ringwork and ditch which seem to have enclosed an area of roughly the same as the 14th-century curtain wall, i.e., an enclosure of 45 – 65m and is large even by medieval ringworks found elsewhere in Britain. It is likely that the buildings would have consisted of the bishop's house with a hall, a bed chamber and a chapel and also holding a brewhouse and a bakehouse.
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Wikipedia