St Ninian’s Cave

About St Ninian’s Cave

St Ninian’s Cave is a place of pilgrimage, visited as far back as the 700’s AD, when a poem written in Latin described St Ninian’s retreats to a cave of “horrible blackness”. Rock-cut crosses, which you can still see, have been dated to this period in the 8th Century, when Whithorn was under the control of the Northumbrian kingdom of Bernicia. The Venerable Bede mentions the miracles performed there at the saint’s shrine and the throngs of pilgrims. There have been rockfalls over the centuries, reducing the size of the Cave, but not affecting its special atmosphere. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Galloway held its annual pilgrimage here annually from the mid 20th Century, until recently it relocated the celebration to the beach at the bottom of the path to the shore. Some of the crosses found here by excavators in the 19th Century are now on display at the Whithorn Priory Museum.