Stirling Castle, its place in Scottish history

by Eric Stair-Kerr

As a short cut to the Park and to the King’s Stables, which lay not far from the village of Raploch, a path was made in 1531 down the steep hillside from the north-west angle of the castle. The built-up doorway can still be seen in the wall of the Nether Bailey, and it was doubtless by this postern that the boy James VI. passed out to hunt on the summer day of 1579 when his wardens allowed him to go forth without a guard.

It is not until the latter half of the fifteenth century that the Royal Gardens at Stirling become important enough to demand attention. In earlier days there was probably a piece of ground set apart for horticultural purposes on the top of the castle rock, but not before the reign of James III. do gardens on an extensive scale appear to have been laid out. In the Exchequer Rolls of that King’s time there are numerous entries of payments to James Wilson, the keeper of the garden at Stirling Castle; indeed, the unfortunate dilettante monarch was almost as much interested in his plants and fruit-trees as in architecture, music and astrology. This King and his successor, James of the Iron Belt, wrought great improvements in the pleasure grounds at Stirling. The father made a new royal garden, which probably lay on the sloping land close to the old Round Table; and the son extended the horticultural area by including a portion of the adjoining meadow and thus embracing the ancient mound. James IV. was more versatile than his father, and he showed his warlike nobles that devotion to gardening and other peaceful occupations was not incompatible with interest in military affairs. The new enclosure was stocked with plum-trees, pear-trees, vines and vegetables, as well as strawberries and flowers. There was in the Park a small natural loch to the south of the Round Table, but James IV. seems to have made ponds or canals beside his new beds and terraces, for the garden was not only an orchard, it was also a pleasant retreat for the King and the lords and ladies of the Court. The clergy of the Chapel Royal took over the charge of the horticulture, and sent men to different parts of Scotland to procure the best seeds and plants.

The Round Table which formed the middle point of James IV.’s new garden was probably in ancient days a place for holding tribal assemblies. In early feudal times it seems to have been the centre of the King’s Ward, which was the muster-ground where armed vassals presented themselves to their sovereign. The Exchequer Rolls of James IV. state that the King changed the ward into a garden, and it was doubtless after this alteration that the place came to be spoken of as the Knot, although the old name continued to be used, for Sir David Lyndsay in James V.’s reign wrote of the “Tabyll Rounde.” The Town Council of Stirling, thinking that the mound and terraces were in danger of becoming obliterated, repaired and slightly altered the King’s Knot in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

The site of the tournament ground at Stirling has been a matter of dispute, some holding that the jousting took place on the flat land near the King’s Knot, others maintaining that the hollow called the Valley, between the castle and the Ladies’ Rock, was the scene of these chivalric encounters. The truth seems to be that although the Valley was used for games in the time of James VI.,[98] the level ground below the hill was the place where the lists were set in the period of the early Stewart kings. This opinion is supported by the fact that the ground now covered by houses to the south-east of the King’s Knot was formerly known by the significant name of the Justing (or Justin) Flats. It must have been on this level tract that the Douglases fought with the knights of Burgundy in the presence of James II., for in the Valley there would have been too little space for the lists, the champions’ tents, the King’s pavilion and the four thousand retainers brought by the Douglases to witness the encounter. The rock where tradition says the ladies sat to view the games and combats is much nearer to the Valley than to the Justin Flats, but it is probable that the high-born dames of the Court sat in the royal pavilion beside the lists, and that the rock was occupied by gentlewomen to whom the privilege was not granted of sitting beside the King. It may be, however, that the Ladies’ Rock did not receive its name till Queen Mary’s time or even till 1594, when the Valley was the scene of the sports which were held in celebration of Prince Henry’s baptism.

The surroundings of the castle, like the buildings themselves, have undergone considerable changes since royalty resided in Stirling. No beds of flowers and fish ponds are now to be seen in the gardens of the Jameses: that piece of ground is somewhat like what it was before the Round Table became the King’s Knot. Villas now stand on the once famous Justin Flats; the small Park Loch has been drained away; and the Ladies’ Rock has suffered partial demolition to make room for the new cemetery that occupies the Valley. Ballengeich, or the “Windy Pass,” on the other side of the castle, was deepened at the north-west end to afford a more gradual ascent for the road; and the Back Walk, leading from Ballengeich round the rock, although it had been begun a number of years before “Prince Charlie’s” siege, was not completed till the eighteenth century had almost come to a close.

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The old Bridge of Stirling, although half a mile distant from the summit of the rock, has been too closely associated with the history of the castle to be overlooked in even a brief description of the buildings and their surroundings. The fortress watched and guarded the bridge for three centuries and a half, as it had watched and guarded the earlier bridge which crossed the Forth about one hundred yards above the site of the later structure. The early edifice, which seems to have been a platform of wood on piers of stone, was the scene of Wallace’s victory in 1297. During that great battle the beams gave way, plunging many soldiers into the river; and although Edward I. in 1305 issued a writ for the repair of the bridge,[99] it was apparently never rebuilt, as throughout the fourteenth century a ferry was in use at Stirling.

STIRLING OLD BRIDGE.

The stone bridge of four arches, which is still to be seen, was erected in the early days of the fifteenth century, but in the course of many ages it has undergone repairs and alterations. Under Robert III. the building was begun, and was finished by his brother, the Regent Albany, about the year 1415. Its appearance to-day is slightly less imposing than it was before the middle of the eighteenth century, for in former times the road passed through an archway at each end of the bridge—the northern one containing an iron gate—and the buttresses of the central pier rose above the parapet and were made to form small guardhouses for those who kept the gate. On the southern bank of the Forth, at the end of the bridge, stood the Chapel of St. Marrock or St. Roch, in which in pre-Reformation days kings and others made their offerings before passing over the stream. As the road approaches the river from the north, it is made to take a double twist, the object of this arrangement doubtless being to throw into confusion any body of cavalry intending to force a passage at this important spot. Probably for the same defensive purpose the bridge is not straight but is somewhat bow-shaped; it seems to sag as if it had felt the current’s strain, for the centre is about a couple of feet further down the stream than the ends.