The Bass Rock is a huge trachyte plug rising 313 feet out of the Firth of Forth, with three sides of sheer cliff and a tunnel piercing the rock to a depth of 105 metres. The gentler slope to the south forms a lower promontory with a lighthouse and the ruins of a castle.

The earliest known inhabitant was Saint Baldred (d. 608), a monk sent from Lindisfarne in the 6th century to the Lothians to convert the heathen inhabitants to Christianity. He used the island as a retreat for prayer and meditation. The small chapel above the castle was built around 1491 and dedicated to Saint Baldred in 1546. The style of the masonry corresponds to other old Culdee chapels throughout Scotland. A few sandstone rybats line one of the sides of the door and inside there is a sandstone trough which once contained the holy water. The gannets were first mentioned in a document sent to the Vatican Council in Rome detailing a dispute between the owners of the Bass and the Cistercian Nuns at North Berwick. The nuns were concerned that the tithe they received on each barrel of fat produced from the slaughtered birds at the autumn cull was under threat.

According to legend the Bass Rock was granted to Sir Robert de Lavedre (Lauder) by King Malcolm III in 1057 in return for his support in the defeat of Macbeth. A later Sir Robert supported William Wallace against the English, taking part in the disastrous Battle of Falkirk. In 1316 William de Lambert, Bishop of St Andrews, transferred the upper part of the Rock (around the hermitage of Saint Baldred) to the Lauders in return for a pure white wax candle for the altar at Tyninghame Church on Whitsunday.

In the early 15th century James, eldest son of Robert III of Scotland, hid in the castle before fleeing to France. He was betrayed to the English by his uncle; imprisoned at Windsor, he was finally ransomed on his uncle's death in 1420. In 1424 James returned to Scotland with his English bride (Joan Beaufort) to be crowned King James I. His uncle's family were duly executed. King James I used the Bass to imprison his enemies including the 14 year old Highlander, Neil Mackay, who was kept there to assure the good behaviour of the Highland clans. He escaped following James' assassination in 1437.

Mary, Queen of Scots, placed a French garrison on the rock to protect the entrance to the Firth of Forth. By 1649, the Bass was in the hands of Sir John Hepburn of Waughton who surrendered it to Cromwell's army in 1651. After the Restoration, Sir Andrew Ramsay, Lord Provost of Edinburgh, acquired the Bass for £400, selling it (for £4000) in 1671 to the government of Charles II for use as a prison to contain the Covenanters (a faction wishing to retain the Presbyterianism of the Civil War years). One of them, Alexander Peden wrote: "We are close shut up in our chambers, not permitted to converse, diet, worship together, but conducted out by two at once in the day to breath in the open air. Envying with reverence the birds their freedom, provoking and calling on us to bless him for the most common mercies, and again close shut up day and night to hear only the sighs and groans of our fellow prisoners." At the Glorious Revolution in 1688, the Covenanters were released on the accession of the Protestant William of Orange as King William III.

Despite the zeal of the Covenanters, the majority of the country continued to be faithful to the Roman Catholic King James Stewart. After the Battle of Killiecrankie, Bass Rock remained the final Jacobite stronghold. A handful of men held out, bravely supplied with provisions by Jacobite sympathisers on the coast, until 1694, when they negotiated a surrender (and an amnesty for themselves and their supporters) with the Protestant forces of William III.

Sir Hew Dalrymple finally purchased the rock from the Crown in one of the last acts of the old Scottish parliament before its dissolution in 1707.

Robert Louis Stevenson, mentions the rock in 'The Tale of Tod Lapraik' a chapter from his novel Catriona. The novelist's grandfather, Robert Stevenson, designed and constructed the lighthouses on Fidra (1885) and the Bass (1902).

The Bass Rock Lighthouse was manned by three keepers who were on-station for one month The paraffin light beamed six white flashes every half minute and could be seen for 21 miles. The foghorn was installed on the north east headland in 1907 with a footpath and guardrail leading from the lighthouse. The sound was made by compressed air produced by diesel-powered machinery. The last keepers left in 1988 when the light was automated.