Castle Hill Church and Graveyard 15 16
April 2017
In late January 1911, an Ardrossan Town Council worker Robert Cook unearthed
the lid of a stone
cofin or sarcophagus in the ruins of the church on the Castle Hill. On Easter
Sunday 2017, Ardrossan Castle Heritage Society displayed a replica lid at the
exact spot where the original was found.
The
church on Castle Hill was originally a Catholic Church, built no later than
1226. It
measured 64 feet by 26 feet. It
had two altars - one dedicated to Saint Peter and the other to the Blessed Virgin
Mary. It became a Church of Scotland after the Reformation of 1560 and
was destroyed in a storm in 1695..
Castle Hill is known locally as Cannon Hill. This is because four or five cannons,
pointing towards the sea, stood on the hill for about three hundred years until
they were removed to reuse their metal in the 1939-45 war.