Stirling Castle
Stirling castle crowns Castle Hill, an intrusive igneous crag. Like Edinburgh
it is surrounded on three sides by steep cliffs, giving it a strong
defensive position. Its strategic location, guarding what was,
until the 1890s, the farthest downstream crossing of the River Forth. Consequently it
has been suggested that this made it an important fortification from the earliest times.
Several Scottish kings and queens have been crowned at Stirling,
including Mary Queen of Scots in 1542.
History
Stirling castle is built on a formation of quartz-dolerite rock which
is around 350 million years old. This was subsequently modified
by glaciation to form a "crag and tail" just like Edinburgh castle 32
miles away. Despite various claims there is no archaeological
evidence for occupation of Castle Hill before the medieval
period. Stirling was often know as Snowdoun as is shown by the
works of William Worcester in the mid fifteenth century.
Stirling first enters history, rather than fantasy, around 1110 when
King Alexander I dedicated a chapel at the castle. It appears to
have been an established royal centre by this time, as Alexander died
here in 1124. During the reign of David I (1124-53), Stirling
became a royal burgh and the castle an important administration
centre. King William I (1165-1214) formed a deer park to the south-west
of the castle, but after his capture at Alnwick in 1174 he was forced
to surrender several castles, including Stirling and Edinburgh
to King Henry II (1154-89), under the treaty of Falaise. There
seem to be no records for the garrisoning of the castle - although
Edinburgh (castellum Puellarum)
was garrisoned at a cost of £26 13s 4d in 1175 - and all the
castles were formally sold back to William by Richard I of England in
1189. Stirling continued to be a favoured royal residence, with
William himself dying there in 1214. Alexander III (1249-86) laid
out the New Park for deer hunting in the 1260s.
In 1291 King Edward I (1272-1307) demanded and received Stirling,
together with the other royal castles of Scotland, be put under his
control during his arbitration over who should be king of Scotland
under him. Edward as judge and his barons, English, Welsh,
Scottish and French, as jury, gave judgement in favour of John
Balliol. However, when John refused to help Edward collect troops
for warfare in France or honour the agreements he had entered into
concerning the legal governing of the kingdom, it caused Edward to
invade Scotland and depose its king as a rebellious subject.
Edward found Stirling castle abandoned and occupied it. After the
victory of Andrew Moray (d.1297) and William Wallace (d.1305) at the battle of Stirling
Bridge in September 1297, the royalist commanders, William Fitz Warin (d.1299), a grandson of Fulk Fitz Warin (d.1198) of Whittington,
who had been made constable of Urquhart castle,
and Marmaduke Thweng (d.1323), retreated into the castle where they
were starved into surrender by the rebels and sent as prisoners to Dumbarton.
The castle was reclaimed by Edward I after his 22 July 1298 victory at
Falkirk, but was besieged again in 1299 and forced to surrender.
It was only in April 1304 that King Edward decided to take Stirling castle
again, this time he was accompanied by at least 17 siege engines
including giant ballista and mangonels with names such as Segrave,
Forster and Robinet. The king also hazzarded himself during the
action, once having his garments and saddle pierced by a quarrel and
once by being thrown from his horse when the defenders scored a near
miss with a catapult. Finally the defenders, under William
Oliphant (d.1329), surrendered on 20 July, but were ordered back into the castle
by Edward, as he had not yet deployed his latest engine, 'Warwolf' -
supposedly a large trebuchet, but as these had been in England since the days of King John, this seems rather unlikely. When the garrison surrendered
unconditionally, Edward granted the men their lives, except for the man
who had betrayed the castle to Wallace four years previously as he was
a traitor.
King Edward died a year after Robert Bruce's 1306 revolt and Edward's
son had neither the inclination nor the ability to continue to govern
Scotland. By 1313, only Stirling, Roxburgh, Edinburgh
and Berwick castles remained to him in Scotland. Edward Bruce,
the king's brother, laid siege to Stirling, which was held by Philip
Mowbray (d.1318). Hard pressed, Mowbray agreed to surrender the castle if
it were not relieved by 24 June 1314. The consequence was the
battle of Bannockburn fought by Edward II's relieving army on 23-24
June within sight of the castle walls. Although Mowbray could
have claimed that Edward coming within sight of the castle constituted
its being relieved, he surrendered the castle and his person to King
Robert Bruce. In turn Robert ordered the castle to be slighted to
prevent its reoccupation by Edwardian forces at a later date.
The castle site fell to the forces of Edward Balliol, the son of King
John, after his great victory over the Scottish regents at the battle
of Dupplin Moor in 1332. In 1336 Thomas Rokeby was captain and
indulging in extensive works, probably repairing the damage done in
1314. Andrew Murray of Bothwell attempted a siege in 1337, when
guns may have been used for the first time by the Scots. However,
it was Robert Stewart (d.1390), the future King Robert II, who retook Stirling
in the siege of 1341–1342. In the aftermath Maurice Murray
was appointed as keeper. In 1360 Robert Forsyth was appointed
governor of Stirling castle, an office he passed on to his son, John,
and grandson, William, who was governor in 1399.
It is said that Earl Robert Stewart of Menteith, the regent of Scotland
as brother of Robert III (d.1406), undertook works on the north and south gates
as the earliest surviving masonry on the site. In 1424, Stirling
castle was part of the jointure (marriage settlement) given to James
I's wife, Joan Beaufort. This established a tradition which later
monarchs continued. After James' murder in 1437, Joan took
shelter within the castle with her son, the young James II.
Fifteen years later, in 1452, it was at Stirling castle that James
stabbed and killed William, the eighth earl of Douglas, when the latter
refused to end a potentially treasonous alliance with Earl John of Ross
and Earl Alexander Lindsay of Crawford. King James III was born
here and later undertook works to the gardens and the chapel
royal. Like Edinburgh, the manufacture of artillery in the castle
is recorded in 1475. King James' wife, Margaret of Denmark, died
within the fortress in 1486. Two years later James himself died
at the battle of Sauchieburn, fought over almost the same ground as the
battle of Bannockburn, just to the south of the castle.
Most of the standing masonry of the current castle is said to have been
constructed between 1490 and 1600. The architecture of these new
buildings shows an eclectic mix of English, French and German
influences. James IV (1488–1513) kept a full Renaissance
court at Stirling as he sought to establish a palace of European
standing. Although he also undertook building works at the royal
residences of Edinburgh, Falkland and Linlithgow, his grandest works
were at Stirling and included the King's Old Building, the Great Hall,
and the Forework. He also renovated the chapel royal, one of the
two churches within the castle at this time. In 1501 he even
received approval from the pope for the establishment of a college of
priests. The Forework, of which little now remains, was derived
from French military architecture, although some details were added
more for style than for defence. If a satirical account in two
poems by the poet William Dunbar is based on fact, the castle walls may
have been the site of an attempt at human-powered flight about 1509, by
the Italian alchemist and abbot of Tongland, John Damian. King
James also kept an alchemist called Caldwell maintaining a furnace for
quinta essencia, the mythical fifth element, at the castle.
The building works begun by James had not been completed at the time of
his death at the battle of Flodden in 1513. His successor, James
V (1513–1542), was crowned in the chapel royal and grew up in the
castle under the guardianship of Lord Erskine. In 1515, the
Regent Albany brought 7,000 men to Stirling to wrest control of the
young king from his mother, Margaret Tudor. Despite this, the
king continued expanding his father's building programme, creating the
centrepiece of the castle, the Royal Palace, built under the direction
of Sir James Hamilton of Finnart and masons brought in from
France. James V also died young, leaving the unfinished work to
be completed by his widow, Mary of Guise. His infant daughter,
Mary Queen of Scots, was brought to Stirling castle for safety, and
crowned in the chapel royal on 9 September 1543. She too was
brought up here until she was sent to Inchmahome priory and then to
France in 1548. When Anglo-French hostilities spread into
Scotland, artillery fortifications were added to the south approach of the
castle. These form the basis of the present outer defences.
Queen Mary returned to Scotland in 1561 and then visited Stirling
castle frequently. She nursed Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, through an
illness here in 1565, before the two were married. Their son,
James VI, was baptised here in 1566. After Darnley's murder, Mary
was travelling from Stirling when she was abducted by the earl of
Bothwell, beginning the chain of events that led to her forced
abdication and flight to England.
After the queen's flight the young King James VI was crowned in the
nearby church of the Holy Rude, and grew up within the castle walls
under the tutelage of the humanist scholar George Buchanan.
Frequently used as a pawn in the struggles between his regents and the
supporters of Mary, the young king was closely guarded. Stirling
became the base for James' supporters, while those nobles who wished to
see Queen Mary restored gathered at Edinburgh, under William Kirkcaldy
of Grange. Grange led a raid on Stirling in 1571, attempting to
round up the Queen's enemies, but failed to gain control of the castle
or the king.
The keeper of the castle, Alexander Erskine of Gogar, was ejected by
supporters of Regent Morton in April 1578, after his son was fatally
wounded during a struggle at the gate. The rebellious earls of
Mar and Angus seized the castle in 1584, but surrendered and fled to
England when the king arrived with an army. They returned the
following year, forcing the king to surrender, although they proclaimed
their loyalty to him. King James' first child, Henry, was born in
the castle in 1594, and the present Chapel Royal was constructed for
his baptism on 30 August. The chapel completed the quadrangle of
the Inner Close. Like his predecessors Henry spent his childhood
here under the second earl of Mar, until the Union of the Crowns of 1603,
when his father succeeded as king of England and the royal family left
for London.
After the king's departure, Stirling's role as a residence declined and
it became principally a military centre. It was used as a prison
for persons of rank during the seventeenth century, but did not feature in the civil
and religious wars of the 1630s and 1640s. Following the
execution of Charles I, the Scots crowned his son as Charles II, and he
became the last reigning monarch to stay here, living at the castle in
1650. The Royalist forces were defeated at Dunbar by those of
Oliver Cromwell, before the king marched south to defeat at
Worcester. General Monck laid siege to the castle on 6 August
1651, erecting gun platforms in the adjacent churchyard. After
the garrison mutinied, Colonel William Conyngham was obliged to
surrender on 14 August. Damage done during the siege can still be
seen on the church and the great hall.
Although garrisoned by the government during the first Jacobite rising,
the castle saw no fighting. In the second Jacobite rising of
1745, the rebel army marched past Stirling on the way to Edinburgh and
the south. Following the Jacobites' retreat from England, they
returned to Stirling in January 1746, where the town soon
surrendered. The castle governor refused to capitulate and
artillery works were set up on Gowan Hill. These were quickly
destroyed by the castle's guns and the Jacobites withdrew north on 1
February, effectively ending the castle's military career.
Description
The outer defences comprise artillery fortifications and were built in
their present form in the eighteenth century, although some parts, including
the French spur at the east end, date back to the regency of Mary of Guise
in the 1550s. The spur was originally an ear-shaped bastion known
as an orillon and contained gun emplacements which protected the main
spur. This projection was fronted by an earth ramp called a
talus, which was entered via a drawbridge over a ditch.
Excavations in the 1970s showed that much of the original stonework
remains within the eighteenth century defences.
Following the attempted Jacobite invasion of 1708, improvements to the
castle's defences were ordered and completed by 1714. The main
result was that the front wall was extended outwards to form Guardhouse
Square. This had the effect of creating two defensive walls, both
of which were fronted by ditches defended by covered firing galleries
known as caponiers. One of the caponiers survives and is
accessible from Guardhouse Square by a narrow staircase. To the
rear of the walls, chambers called casemates were built to strengthen
the wall, and to provide gun emplacements. The French spur was
modified slightly to allow more cannons to be mounted.
The
gatehouse, providing entry from the outer defences to the castle
proper, was only finished around 1506. It originally formed part
of a forework, extending as a curtain wall across the whole width of
Castle Hill. At the centre is the gatehouse itself, which now
stands to less than half its original height. The round towers at
the outer corners rose to conical roofs, with battlements carried
around the tops of the towers. These were flanked by more round
towers, of which only traces now remain. There were further round
towers at the rear of the gatehouse, making it a square tower with 4
corner turrets and the gate passageway in between. The overall
design, as drawn by John Slezer in 1693, shows French influence, and
has parallels with the forework erected at Linlithgow palace.
Like this, the forework was probably intended more for show than for
serious defence, as it would have offered little protection against
contemporary artillery - either that or the original defences are
merely refaced and much older than is currently reckoned. The
entrance to the ward was via a central passage, flanked by two separate
pedestrian passages. This triple arrangement was unusual in its
time. Classical triumphal arches have been suggested as an
influence. The gatehouse was dismantled gradually, and then
consolidated in its present form in 1810.
The gatehouse is coated in a fine ashlar, which is totally different to
the rubble built curtain walls that begin 20' either side of it.
Just beyond these junctions there were semi-circular projecting towers
similar to the ones on the gatehouse. However these are faced in
well-laid rubble. Adjoining the south-west tower is the plinth of the
older curtain which runs off to the rectangular Prince's Tower.
This is overlain by ashlar of a similar quality to that which coats the
gatehouse. At each end of the curtain wall is a rectangular
tower. The west tower, known as the Prince's Tower, survives to its
full height, and is now attached to the later palace. At the east
end, the Elphinstone Tower contained a kitchen and possibly an
officer's lodging. It was cut down to form a gun battery,
probably in the early eighteenth century, when the outer defences were rebuilt. This marks the extent of the surviving medieval castle.
Within the forework is a courtyard known as the outer close, containing eighteenth century
structures. The early north gate, giving access to the nether or
lower bailey, contained the original castle kitchens, which were
probably linked to the great hall. The kitchen which is now
visible was constructed later. In 1689 these rooms were infilled
to provide gun emplacements. To the west of the outer close, the
main parts of the castle are arranged around the quadrangular inner
close: the royal palace to the south, the king's old building on the west, the
chapel royal to the north, and the great hall to the east.
The oldest part of the inner close is thought to be the king's old
building, on the west side. This was complete by 1497. It was
begun as a new residential range by James IV and originally comprised
an L shaped building. The principal rooms were on the first
floor, over cellars and included two chambers with wide open views to
the west. The projecting stair tower has an octagonal upper section,
which was copied for a second, later stair tower on the same
building. In 1855, the north end of the building burned down, and was
rebuilt in a ‘baronial style'. At the south-west end of the range
is a linking building, once used as kitchens, which is on a different
alignment to both the king's old building and the adjacent royal
palace. It has been suggested that this is an earlier fifteenth century
structure. Excavations within this building revealed burials,
suggesting that this may have been the site of a church or
chapel. The skeletons found, all buried with dignity, seem to
have mostly met gruesome ends and were thought to have been members of
the garrison mainly beaten to death in isolated groups. One was a
woman who had been knifed. Many were shown to have been from the
early fourteenth century.
On the east side of the inner close is the great or parliament hall.
This was built by James IV following on from the completion of the
king's old building in 1497 and was being plastered by 1503. It
represents the first example of Renaissance influenced royal
architecture in Scotland and was worked on by a number of English
craftsmen, being comparable to Edward IV's hall at Eltham palace, built
in the late 1470s. It includes Renaissance details within a
conventional medieval plan. Inside are five fireplaces and large
side windows lighting the dais end. It is 138' by 47' across,
making it the largest such hall in Scotland.
To the west of the fourteenth century
gatehouse, forming the south side of the inner close, is the royal
palace. It was begun in the 1530s and was largely complete by the
time of James V's death in December 1542. The architecture of
this is French inspired, but the decoration is more German. The
statues include a line of soldiers on the south parapet and a series of
full size figures around the principal floor. These include a
portrait of James V, the devil, St Michael and representations of Venus
and several planetary deities. Internally, the palace comprises
two apartments, one for the king and one for the queen.
The collegiate chapel established by James IV in 1501 lay between the
king's old Building and the great hall, but was further south than the
present building. This was the chapel in which Queen Mary was
crowned in 1543. After this a new building was erected within a
year, north of the old site to improve access to the hall. This too
was later modified for military use, housing a dining room. The
wall paintings were rediscovered in the 1930s, and restoration began
after the Second World War.
Beyond the north gate, the nether bailey occupies the north end of Castle
Hill. Surrounded by defensive walls, the area contains a nineteenth century
guard
house and gunpowder stores as well as the modern tapestry studio.
There was formerly access to the nether bailey from Ballengeich to the
west, until the postern was blocked in response to the threat of
Jacobite
rebellion.
Due to its similar appearance to
Colditz castle in Saxony, the castle was used to film the exterior
shots for the 1970s TV series Colditz.
Why not join me at Stirling and other Great Scottish Castles this Spring? Information on tours at Scholarly Sojourns.
Copyright©2016
Paul Martin Remfry