The Veiled Nun of St Leonards

If you go through the Pends, heading downhill towards St Andrews harbour, you will see a lane running off to the right just after you have walked through the Pends and before the road turns left and heads steeply downhill between the walls of the cemetery and the walls of St Leonards School.

This little lane is known as the Nun's Walk.  It leads to the Church of St Leonard and it features in one of the most famous ghost stories of St Andrews.

Centuries ago, a young woman lived in St Andrews.  She was well-educated, religious, beautiful and rich.  Needless to say, she was also wooed by many suitors.  She, however, would have none of them and disappointed suitor after disappointed suitor was turned away from her parents'door 

One day, however, she unexpectedly allowed an eligible young man to pursue her and win her hand.  Wedding preparations were made, but the bride suddenly changed her mind and announced that instead of becoming an earthly bride she would enter a nunnery and become a Bride of Christ.

When her fiance heard this he rushed to St Andrews to claim her as his own, but, alas, when he arrived there he found that she had done what she had threatened to do; with a knife she had cut off both her eyelids, slit both her nostrils, cut off her lips and branded both her cheeks with a red-hot poker.

Horrified, he rushed back home and committed suicide.  The young woman died a few weeks later.  Since then, however, people have claimed to have seen a dark figure, heavily-veiled, emerging from behind a tree in this lane.  If you look to the left of this photo you can see the stump which is all that's left of the tree now.

Encountering the Veiled Nun of St Leonards was regarded as a sign of ill-omen, and if she drew aside her heavy veil and showed her mutilated face the unfortunate spectator was doomed to die within the year.

Why did the lady act this way?  Was she a religious fanatic?  Was she so afraid of marriage?  Nobody knows.  There isn't even historical proof of a nunnery existing in St Andrews but the tale has been handed down for centuries...