This college was founded by John Hepburn, Prior of St. Andrews, in conjunction with Archbishop Alexander Stewart. It remained under the authority of the prior and chapter, and was designed for the education of twenty-four poor students. The college, however, soon became famed for its learning, and was attended by sons of the nobility. The students were specially instructed in music, and helped to spread a knowledge of sacred music throughout the country. George Buchanan, the well-known scholar, was at one time Principal.
The chapel (Fig. 1389) is a simple oblong chamber, being, internally, about 80 feet in length by 20 feet 6 inches in width, and has no division between chancel and nave. The design of the windows and buttresses (Fig. 1390) accords well with the date of erection in the sixteenth century, being in the perpendicular style, such as is common in the colleges in England. The windows are all square-headed, and the three-light ones have the heads of the lights cusped like quatrefoils. The church appears, from the marks in the walls, to have been extended 24 feet at the east end, probably at the time when it was converted into the college.
On the north side of the church is a room with a round barrel vault, probably the sacristy. From the door of the sacristy a narrow passage runs along the east end of the church in the thickness of the wall, and from it there are two loops into the church. Above this passage, and also in the thickness of the wall, another narrow passage is constructed in the east wall, which is continued round in the north wall as far as the vault of the sacristy extends. There is a shallow piscina in the east window sill. The west end has a door in the centre, and three remarkable niches above it. They have the appearance of having been placed there in recent times, when the west end was rebuilt. The arms of Prior Hepburn are inserted in this wall, and they are also carved on one of the south buttresses.
There are no windows in the north wall, but the interior contains several good Renaissance monuments. In the floor is the flat tombstone of John Wynram, Superintendent of Fife, who died in 1582; and against the north wall is the monument of Robert Stewart, Earl of March, who was commendator of the priory after the Regent Moray's death.
The church was for long used for public worship, but after the College of St. Leonards was united to that of St. Salvator in 1747, the former was abandoned in 1759.
A long range of buildings on the south side of the church was occupied as the students' lodgings, but these were also abandoned, and have now been converted into private residences.
Several alterations were likewise made on the church within recent times, the steeple being taken down, and the west end "set back," so as to give more room for access to one of the private houses.
