St. Andrew’s Day: Students asked to help find saint’s missing hand

People used to touch the statue's fingers to bring them luck until the hand went missing

The statue of Scotland's patron saint which is missing its left hand (University of St Andrews/PA)

An appeal has been made on St Andrew's Day for a statue of the saint to be reunited with its hand.

Current and former students of the University of St Andrews are being asked for information which could solve a decades-old mystery of the disappearing ‘lucky’ hand.

The large statue of the saint was gifted to Scotland’s oldest university in the 1960s – and at some point over almost four decades based in the Botanic Garden car park in St Andrews it lost its left hand.

Before its donation to the university, the statue stood in the foyer of the North British & Mercantile Insurance Company building in Edinburgh, where staff touched the statue's hand for luck.

On St Andrew’s Day, the university has unveiled plans to clean, restore and move the statue to a central location and put it on display.

Ahead of the move, the institution has appealed to generations of students past and present for information on the missing hand.

Dr Katie Stevenson, who is leading the restoration project, said: “The hand of St Andrew is an important part of the statue's history.

“Before it came to the university in the 1960s, St Andrew sat in the foyer of the North British & Mercantile Insurance Company building in Edinburgh and as members of staff came in to work they touched his fingers to bring them luck.

“We are pleased to be able to retrieve Andrew for conservation and repair and we hope that his new home in the gardens of the university museum on The Scores in St Andrews will allow people to enjoy him. It would be wonderful if we could locate his original hand for our repair work.”

The statue will be moved from its current location for restoration work before the end of this year.

Additional reporting by PA