Stirling, castle, church and Pyramid

The castle rock came into existence roughly 350 million years ago as a layer of molten rock forced up from a distant volcanic fissure, and which flowed outwards between layers of hard rock before rising upwards at what is now Stirling. By the start of the last Ice Age, about one and a half million years ago, the rock may already have begun to emerge as a significant landscape feature, but it was the movement of ice which fully exposed the edge of the sill. The scouring action of ice sheets, moving from north-west to south-east, created sheer faces along the rock's western side and northern end. As the ice melted, an inlet of the sea formed around the rock, but layers of clay, and then of peat, built up to form vast tracts of marshland to the west of the rock, through which the River Forth meandered out to the gradually withdrawing sea. Confining these marshlands - the Flanders, Blairdrummond and Drip Mosses - were the Ochil Hills to the north-east of the rock, and the Gargunnock and Touch Hills to the south-west.

Mosses have been drained over the last two centuries, and the resultant rich farmland now presents no barrier to movement. But throughout the Middle Ages the combination of marshes, high hills and a major river restricted communication routes. Until recently many of the main land and water routes running both north-south and eastwest through central Scotland had to pass directly below the castle rock, and whoever controlled Stirling controlled much of the country. The combination of an almost impregnable rock site and a location of such high strategic significance made Stirling an irresistible situation for a major castle.
 

Wars of Independence

The Battle of Stirling Bridge, 1297
Early in September the Scottish army, led by William Wallace and Andrew Murray, took up position on Abbey Craig, overlooking the timber bridge over the Forth, a short way upstream of the present bridge. They bided their time, knowing that the English, under the command of the Earl of Surrey, had at some stage to cross that bridge. Eventually, on 11 September, the English began to cross. Wallace and Murray held off until the enemy were well on the bridge, and then they gave the order to charge. The English cavalry, struggling two abreast across the narrow causeway, were caught in the trap. Some were killed outright, others were drowned, and only a lucky few got away. Hugh Cressingham, Edward I of England's Treasurer, was killed and his body skinned. Andrew Murray was also badly injured in the battle and died of his wounds that November, and William Wallace lost his next battle against the English, at Falkirk, the following summer.

A combination of the death of Edward I in 1307 and the inspired leadership of Robert I led to a rapid improvement in Scottish fortunes. By 1313 only the castles of Stirling, Edinburgh, Berwick and Bothwell remained in English hands, and Robert's younger brother, Edward, laid siege to Stirling, captained by Sir Philip Moubray. However, Edward Bruce lifted the siege on the understanding that the castle would be handed to the Scots if not relieved by the English before Midsummer's Day of 1314. It was Edward II's determination to retain Stirling which led to the Battle of Bannockburn on 23/24 June 1314, and which gave the Scots one of their finest victories. By this stage, however, Robert considered that the best policy was to render all castles indefensible, to avoid the risk of their being held against him, and this was done at Stirling after Bannockburn.

As so often, Scottish good fortune was not sustained. Robert I's heir at his death in 1329 was his five year-old son, David II, and in 1332 the son of John Balliol, Edward, took advantage of the new king's youth to invade the kingdom, with the support of Edward III of England and those Scottish nobles earlier dispossessed for disloyalty by Robert I. Stirling was again under English control from at least 1336, when its warden was Sir Thomas Rokeby, and much building and strengthening work was then carried out. Andrew Murray (whose father, also Andrew Murray, was Wallace's co-leader at Stirling Bridge) laid an abortive siege in 1337, though it was only in 1342 that it was eventually retaken for the Scots, by Robert the Steward.

The Battle of Bannockburn, 1314
The Scots had given the English a deadline of Midsummer's Day to relieve their beleaguered garrison in the Stirling Castle or have them surrender. Edward II took up the challenge and crossed the River Tweed on 17 June at the head of a 20,000 strong army. King Robert (the Bruce) mustered his smaller force near Bannock Burn, a little to the south of Stirling, and waited. On Sunday 23 June, the English vanguard, under the Earl of Hereford, approached the Scottish lines and charged. One of the earliest encounters was between the Bruce himself and Henry de Bohun, and the sight of their King splitting open the skull of the Earl of Hereford's nephew with his battleaxe moved the Scots to repulse the attack. The two sides then drew back to their positions.

James III was on poor terms with his wife, Margaret of Denmark, in the later years of their marriage, and she spent the last three years of her life at the castle, largely apart from her husband. With her at Stirling was the young Duke of Rothesay, the future James IV, and he remained there after his mother's death in 1486. Two years later he was persuaded to leave the castle to join the magnates who had risen against his father, and this was probably the most important factor in James III's defeat at Sauchieburn and his subsequent assassination. When James IV succeeded to the throne, he confessed his part in his father's death to the head of the castle's chapel. From then on he is said to have worn an iron belt around his waist as penance and evidence of his deep remorse.

Burgh of Stirling
A royal castle did not exist in isolation. Many people were required to service the needs of its occupants, though not all of those lived within the castle itself. Additionally, the protection afforded by a major stronghold, particularly when it was set at the junction of important trade routes, acted as a magnet to craftsmen and those who wished to sell their goods in peace. Consequently, urban settlements grew up around castles, and at Stirling the natural place for this burgh was along the sloping main approach to the castle. As early as the reign of David I (1124-53), the developing settlement here was given the privilege of royal protection, and during his reign - if not before - there was a parish
church to meet the spiritual needs of its people.

Stirling has retained many fine buildings from before the time of its modern expansion. Grandest of all is the parish church of the Holy Rude, which was rebuilt in two principal campaigns starting around 1414 and 1507, resulting in one of the most imposing of Scotland's great late medieval burgh churches. The burgh also had several other churches, including friaries for the Dominicans and Observant Franciscans, the chapels of at least five hospitals, and the Augustinian abbey of Cambuskenneth in the valley to the east.

Of these churches only Holy Rude and Cambuskenneth Abbey still have visible remains, though something of the Dominican church is known from excavations. Other partly pre-Reformation buildings include the four-arched bridge over the Forth, and parts of the town wall. The present bridge is probably largely of the sixteenth century, though we know that the earliest bridges here were of timber, and a short way upstream. The remaining parts of the wall along the south and west sides of the burgh date mainly from a decision by the burgh council to provide defences in 1547.
 

James V's Palace
James V was crowned in the Chapel at Stirling 12 days after his father's death, on 21 September 1513. He was only 17 months old. His subsequent upbringing cannot have been a happy time for him, as various magnates squabbled over control of the royal person. By the age of 16 he had effectively established his own authority and, perhaps partly in reaction against his English mother, his own horizons were distinctly European. As early as 1517 it had been agreed in the Treaty of Rouen that he was to have a French bride, though François I of France was less enthusiastic when the time came to honour his agreement. Eventually, in 1536, James V went in person to France to claim a bride, and was rewarded with the Princess Madeleine, who was to die within six months of the marriage. For his second wife he took the more robust daughter of the Duke of Guise-Lorrainc, Mary of Guise. For his second French queen, James V built the magnificent Palace at Stirling. A number of French details show that James had taken a close interest in the buildings of his first father-in-law whilst visiting France, and we also know that he had several French masons in his service. James V's court at Stirling must have been as vibrant as that of his father, and it is particularly pleasing to think that at least some of the exquisite church music of Robert Carver was composed for the Chapel Royal. But the fifth James's life was even briefer than his father's, since he died in 1542 at the age of 30, broken by the disastrous defeat of his army by the English at Solway Moss, leaving a female baby to succeed him.

 

Queen Mary
Mary was crowned as Queen of Scots on 9 September 1543 within the Chapel Royal, a ceremony said dismissively by Henry VIII of England's representative to have been carried out with 'not very costlie' ceremonial. Henry VIII saw the marriage of his own son, Prince Edward, to the infant queen as his best hope of reviving English claims to Scotland, and the marriage was agreed under the Treaty of Greenwich in 1543. But many in Scotland doubted English assurances that Scottish independence would be respected and by 1548, after two further phases of warfare with England, it was decided to send the infant queen to France for marriage to the heir to the French throne, who succeeded as François II in 1559.

During Mary's absence in France, Scotland was frequently a battleground between those who wished the country to move towards a closer alliance with Protestant England, and those who preferred a relationship with Catholic France. Various major artillery fortifications were raised by both sides, and at Stirling we now realise that, embodied within later structures, there are significant remains of a particularly important system of outer defences, (including the French Spur) which were almost certainly built for Mary of Guise in the 1550s.

King James VI
Mary was forced to abdicate on 24 July 1567. She was succeeded by the year-old James VI, who was crowned in Stirling parish church five days later. Much of James' childhood was passed within Stirling Castle, where he was taught by the formidable scholar, George Buchanan, who did not scruple to advise the King what James thought about his mother. As usual with royal minorities, James became a focus for rival factions. There were attacks on the castle while the king was in residence in 1571 and 1578; he was taken there as a virtual prisoner after the Ruthven Raid in 1582, and there was a further siege in 1585.

Reports on the structural state of the castle from James VI's reign suggest that lack of maintenance had led to some buildings being in a state of pending collapse. One of these was the Chapel Royal, which was both in a poor state and in an inconvenient position, and James VI's chief architectural contribution to the castle was its rebuilding to an elegant design in 1594. The reason for this was the baptism of Prince Henry, the first son born to James and Queen Anne of Denmark. By this stage it was certain that the 60-year-old Elizabeth I of England would have no children, and it was now the turn of a monarch of Scotland to have claims on the English throne. In producing a son, and giving him a name favoured by the English royal house, James was therefore offering the prospect of continuity to both England and Scotland. The celebrations were duly magnificent. One of the centrepieces of the banquet held afterwards in the Great Hall was a splendid ship which brought in a variety of fish, and which was apparently such a fine piece that it was preserved into the eighteenth century.
 

Castle in Recent Times
Stirling Castle was rapidly becoming a military back-water. There was no reason to carry out more than minimal maintenance of its great buildings, and in 1777, for example, when part of a fine ceiling in the king's lodging fell, the rest was simply removed. Such architecture was no longer greatly valued, and there was little money to pay for work which was not militarily necessary. While this may now be deemed regrettable, the more positive aspect of the situation is that lack of interest meant there were no great schemes of rebuilding, and adaptations were kept to the essential minimum.

The situation changed at the end of the century, on the outbreak of warfare with Revolutionary and Napoleonic France. In 1794 Stirling was the rendezvous for Campbell of Lochnell's mustering of the Duke of Argyll's Highland regiment [one of the two component elements of what was to become the regiment of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, and which was eventually to have the castle as its base after the two elements were united in 1881]. Soon afterwards, there was a drive to provide accommodation at all of the major castles, which at Stirling was achieved by inserting floors and walls in the Great Hall to create barrack rooms. From then on, Stirling was to be home to varying numbers of soldiers, and the castle was increasingly adapted to meet their needs. The royal buildings - and many lesser buildings as well - had to respond to these changed requirements, though this did at least ensure that they were preserved. Additionally, several new buildings were raised, from the Main Guard House and Fort Major's House in the Outer Close, to the magazines in the Nether Bailey, and these are now valued as an integral part of the castle's architectural history. But even while military requirements were met, there was growing appreciation of the castle's architectural qualities during the nineteenth century. By 1849 it was felt to be worth a visit by Queen Victoria, who thought it was 'extremely grand'. It was also admired by Robert Billings, who included views in his influential publication on the Baronial and Ecclesiastical Antiquities of Scotland, published between 1845 and 1852. Billings was himself called on to rebuild the damaged parts of the King's Old Building after a fire in 1855. Nevertheless, the army's priority still had to be the accommodation of its soldiers, though there was a shift of emphasis after 1906, when King Edward VII asked that maintenance of the buildings he transferred from the War Office to the Office of Works.

With the co-operation of the War Office, the change of responsibility in 1906 encouraged a more sympathetic climate for the care of the castle's historic structures and, where possible, works were carried out in a way that allowed their inherent qualities to be appreciated. Yet further changes became possible when the castle ceased to be the military depot for the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders in 1964, though some might have felt that, with the loss of both its monarchs and its permanent complement of soldiers, there was a risk of the castle forfeiting something of its raison d'etre. However, in recent years, major works of improvement have been instigated, including the restoration of the Great Hall, and continue with the ongoing refurbishment of the Palace.