King's Cave

King’s Cave stands on the Isle of Arran in North Ayrshire, the largest of several sea caves along the shore north of Blackwaterfoot. The cave and the cliffs around it were shaped by the weight of glaciers during the last ice age, when the sea stood metres higher than today. When the ice melted, the land rose and left a raised beach thirty metres above the present high tide. The hillside above the cliffs slopes gently, a remnant of an older raised beach. The cave carries two names from later centuries. Local records from the eighteenth century mention church meetings and a school held inside the cave. Before that it was called Fingal’s Cave after the Irish hero Fionn mac Cumhaill, but today it is known as King’s Cave for the legend of Robert the Bruce. Visitors walk along the raised beach to reach the cave mouth, where the roof rises to form a large chamber. Inside, the walls show the marks of ancient tides and the 1909 trench dug by archaeologists. Outside, the view stretches over the raised cliffs to the sea below, while the gentle slope above tells of an older shoreline long lifted by the land’s slow rebound.