Stirling Castle: A Scottish Royal Fortress and Renaissance Palace
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- United Kingdom
- Primary era
- Early Modern
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- Open
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- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
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- British, Kingdom of Scotland
- Site type
- Military
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- Castle
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History
Stirling Castle is a Scottish royal fortress in Stirling, United Kingdom, developed chiefly between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as a Renaissance royal centre. Built and expanded by Scottish monarchs, it occupied Castle Hill above the farthest downstream crossing of the River Forth until the 1890s, giving the site an important role in regional defence and government.
Castle Hill and the medieval royal centre
Castle Hill forms part of the Stirling Sill, a geological formation created from quartz-dolerite about 350 million years ago and later shaped by glaciation. The hill may have been occupied in antiquity, but archaeological evidence does not demonstrate settlement there before the late medieval period. Proposed associations with the Maeatae, the Manaw Gododdin, the settlement of Iudeu mentioned in seventh- and eighth-century records, and later Pictish control remain uncertain.
Several legends connect Stirling with the name Snowdoun, King Arthur, and a chapel supposedly founded by St Monenna. The Monenna tradition probably arose through confusion between early Christian figures, including Modwenna and Moninne. Claims by Hector Boece that the Romans fortified Stirling under Agricola, or that Kenneth MacAlpin besieged it, are not considered reliable.
The first record of the castle dates from around 1110, when King Alexander I dedicated a chapel there. Alexander died at Stirling in 1124, showing that the site was already an established royal centre. Under David I, Stirling became a royal burgh, and the castle developed into an important administrative base.
William I established a deer park south-west of the castle. After his capture by the English in 1174, Stirling was surrendered under the Treaty of Falaise, although no evidence shows that English forces occupied it. Richard I formally returned the castle in 1189. Stirling continued to serve as a favoured royal residence, and William I died there in 1214. Alexander III created the New Park for deer hunting in the 1260s.
The Wars of Scottish Independence
Stirling remained a centre of royal administration until Alexander III died in 1286. The succession crisis that followed led Edward I of England to demand control of Stirling and Scotland’s other royal castles while he arbitrated between rival claimants. He eventually gave judgment in favour of John Balliol.
In 1296, during the Wars of Scottish Independence, the late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century conflicts over English control of Scotland, English forces found Stirling Castle abandoned and occupied it. Andrew Moray and William Wallace recovered the castle after the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297. The English commanders William FitzWarin and Marmaduke Thweng withdrew into the fortress, whose garrison was eventually starved into surrender.
The Scots abandoned Stirling after the English victory at Falkirk in 1298, and Edward I strengthened the defences. Robert Bruce’s forces besieged the castle in 1299 and forced the English garrison to surrender. In 1304, Stirling was the last castle remaining in Scottish hands. Edward I then attacked it with at least 17 siege engines. William Oliphant surrendered on 20 July, although part of the garrison was ordered back inside so that Edward could deploy the large trebuchet called Warwolf.
After Robert Bruce’s victory at Bannockburn in 1314, Sir Philip Mowbray handed Stirling Castle to the Scots. Bruce ordered its defences destroyed to prevent the English from occupying it again.
Rebuilding and royal occupation
During the Second War of Scottish Independence, the English again held Stirling by 1336. Thomas Rokeby commanded the castle, and extensive works were carried out, mainly in timber. Andrew Murray attempted to besiege it in 1337, possibly using guns among the earliest recorded in Scotland. Robert Stewart, later Robert II, recovered the castle during a siege in 1341 and 1342. Maurice Murray, appointed keeper, substantially strengthened it, and the office of governor later passed from Robert de Forsyth to his son John and grandson William, who held it in 1399.
Under Robert II and Robert III, the earliest surviving parts of the castle were constructed. Robert Stewart, acting as regent, directed work on the north and south gates. The present North Gate stands on foundations dating from the 1380s. In 1424, Stirling formed part of Joan Beaufort’s marriage settlement from James I, beginning a practice continued by later monarchs.
After James I was murdered in 1437, Joan Beaufort took refuge at Stirling with her son James II. James held a tournament there in 1449 and killed William, 8th Earl of Douglas, at the castle in 1452 after Douglas refused to end an alliance regarded as potentially treasonous. James III was born at Stirling and later improved its gardens and chapel. Artillery manufacture at the castle is recorded in 1475, and Margaret of Denmark died there in 1486.
The Stewart Renaissance court
Almost all the principal buildings now visible were constructed between 1490 and 1600, when Stirling became a principal royal centre under James IV, James V, and James VI. The Stewart dynasty, also called the Stuart dynasty, was Scotland’s ruling house. Its monarchs combined medieval defensive traditions with Renaissance planning and ornament, reflecting the dynasty’s international ambitions and the European cultural movement that revived Classical forms from the fifteenth century onward.
James IV developed a Renaissance court and sought to create a palace of European standing. His major works included the King’s Old Building, the Great Hall, the Forework, and improvements to the Chapel Royal. In 1501, Pope Alexander VI approved the establishment of a college of priests at the castle. The building programme remained unfinished when James IV died at Flodden in 1513.
James V was crowned in the Chapel Royal and grew up at Stirling under the guardianship of Lord Erskine. In 1515, Regent Albany brought 7,000 men to Stirling in an effort to take control of the young king from his mother, Margaret Tudor. James V continued the building programme and commissioned the Royal Palace under Sir James Hamilton of Finnart. After James V died, Mary of Guise continued the work.
Mary, Queen of Scots, was brought to Stirling for safety in 1543 and crowned in the Chapel Royal on 9 September that year. During the Rough Wooing, the conflict between Scotland and England during the 1540s, Mary of Guise added artillery fortifications to the southern approach, including the French Spur, with assistance from the Italian military engineer Lorenzo Pomarelli.
Mary, Queen of Scots, and James VI
Mary, Queen of Scots, frequently visited Stirling after returning to Scotland in 1561. She nursed Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, there during an illness in 1565, and their son James VI was baptised at the castle in December 1566. The celebrations included fireworks, an assault on a mock castle, and a masque designed by Bastian Pagez. The Earl of Mar became hereditary governor in 1566.
James VI was raised within the castle under Annabell Murray, Countess of Mar, and the humanist scholar George Buchanan. Stirling became the base of James’s supporters during the political struggle between his regents and supporters of Mary, Queen of Scots. William Kirkcaldy of Grange raided Stirling in 1571 but failed to capture either the castle or the king. Political conflicts affected control of the fortress in 1578, 1584, and 1585.
Anne of Denmark arranged to give birth to her first child at Stirling, prompting James VI to order repairs to the palace. Prince Henry was born there in 1594, and the present Chapel Royal was built for his baptism on 30 August. Henry spent his childhood at Stirling under the 2nd Earl of Mar. The Union of the Crowns in 1603, which placed James VI on the English throne as James VI and I, moved the royal family to London and reduced Stirling’s role as a royal residence.
Military stronghold
After 1603, Stirling became principally a military centre. It also served as a prison for people of rank during the seventeenth century. James VI and I stayed there in July 1617, and preparations were made for a visit by Charles I. Charles came in 1633 but stayed only briefly.
Charles II was crowned by the Scots in 1650 and became the last reigning monarch to reside at Stirling. General George Monck besieged the castle from 6 August 1651, placing gun platforms in the adjacent churchyard. After the garrison mutinied, Colonel William Conyngham surrendered on 14 August. Damage from the siege remains visible on the church and Great Hall.
After the Restoration, the Earl of Mar was restored as governor, and the castle housed Covenanters as prisoners. The Covenanters were Scottish Presbyterians who opposed royal interference in church government. A permanent garrison was established in 1685, increasing the castle’s military role.
Following the Jacobite rising of 1715, government troops occupied Stirling while the Duke of Argyll moved against the forces of John Erskine, 6th Earl of Mar. In the rising of 1745 and 1746, Charles Edward Stuart’s army passed Stirling, but Governor William Blakeney refused to surrender the castle in January 1746. Jacobite artillery positions on Gowan Hill were destroyed by the castle’s guns, and the Jacobites withdrew on 1 February. The Jacobite risings were attempts to restore the deposed Stuart line to the British throne.
Barracks, regimental depot, and conservation
From 1800, the War Office administered Stirling Castle as a barracks. The Great Hall became accommodation, the Chapel Royal a lecture theatre and dining hall, the King’s Old Building an infirmary, and the Royal Palace an officers’ mess. A prison and powder magazine were added at the Nether Bailey in 1810.
Under the Cardwell Reforms, Stirling became the depot for the 72nd Highland Regiment of Foot and the 91st Argyllshire Highlanders Regiment of Foot in 1873. In 1881, the 91st and 93rd regiments were amalgamated to form the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, whose depot was at the castle. The castle remains associated with the regiment, and its regimental museum and headquarters are located there, although the regiment’s surviving company has been based at Redford Barracks in Edinburgh since 2014.
A ten-year programme of research and re-presentation restored the Royal Lodgings and was completed in 2011. A related project recreated the Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries through research into the fifteenth-century originals and medieval weaving techniques; it was completed in 2015. Stirling Castle is a Scheduled Ancient Monument and is managed as a heritage site by Historic Environment Scotland.
Remains
Stirling Castle occupies the summit of Castle Hill, an intrusive crag within the Stirling Sill. Steep cliffs on three sides create a naturally defensive position. The complex is arranged around the quadrangular Inner Close, with the Royal Palace on the south, the King’s Old Building on the west, the Chapel Royal on the north, and the Great Hall on the east. The Outer Close lies within the Forework, while the Nether Bailey extends across the northern end of Castle Hill beyond the North Gate.
Outer defences and approach
The Forework
James IV’s Forework gatehouse was probably completed around 1506. It originally formed part of a curtain wall extending across Castle Hill, but the gatehouse now stands at less than half its original height. Its round corner towers once had conical roofs and encircling battlements, while traces survive of additional flanking towers. The design shows French influence and is recorded in John Slezer’s drawing of 1693.
The Forework appears to have served partly as a display of royal magnificence rather than as a fully effective defence against contemporary artillery. Its entrance contained a central passage flanked by two pedestrian passages, an unusual triple arrangement possibly influenced by Classical triumphal arches. The gatehouse was gradually dismantled and consolidated in its present form in 1810.
Prince’s and Elphinstone Towers
The western tower of the Forework, known as the Prince’s Tower, survives to its full height and is attached to the later palace. The eastern Elphinstone Tower contained a kitchen and possibly accommodation for officers. It was reduced to form a gun battery, probably during the eighteenth-century rebuilding of the Outer Defences.
Artillery fortifications
The Outer Defences contain several phases of artillery work. The French Spur, partly dating from the 1550s, was originally an ear-shaped bastion, or projecting gun platform, with gun emplacements. An earth ramp called a talus stood in front of it, and a drawbridge crossed the ditch. Excavations in the 1970s showed that much of the original stonework survives within the later eighteenth-century defences.
The defensive works begun after 1708 and completed by 1714 extended the main front wall outwards to create Guardhouse Square. Two defensive walls, each fronted by a ditch, were equipped with covered firing galleries called caponiers. One caponier survives and is reached from Guardhouse Square by a narrow staircase. Casemates behind the walls strengthened the defences and provided gun positions, while the French Spur was altered to carry more cannon.
The buildings within Guardhouse Square date from the nineteenth century. Outside the castle, the early nineteenth-century Esplanade was formerly a parade ground and is now used as a car park and performance space.
The Outer Close and Nether Bailey
The Outer Close contains the late eighteenth-century Main Guard House and the early nineteenth-century Fort Major’s House. The early North Gate leads to the Nether Bailey and originally contained the castle kitchens, probably linked to the Great Hall. The visible Great Kitchen was built later against the east wall. In 1689, rubble was packed into the kitchen rooms to support gun emplacements known as the Grand Battery. Excavations in the 1920s established the extent of the surviving rooms, and the vaults were reconstructed in 1929.
A small building above the North Gate is traditionally identified as a mint, known in Scots as the Cunzie Hoose, or coining house. The Nether Bailey is enclosed by defensive walls and contains a nineteenth-century guard house, gunpowder stores, and the modern tapestry studio. Its former western postern was blocked in response to the Jacobite threat.
Buildings of the Inner Close
The King’s Old Building
The King’s Old Building forms the west side of the Inner Close and was completed around 1497 as a residential range for James IV. Originally L-shaped, it contained principal rooms on the first floor above cellars, including two chambers with wide views westward. Its projecting stair tower has an octagonal upper section that was copied in a later stair tower.
The northern end burned in 1855 and was rebuilt in the Baronial style by Robert William Billings. A linking building at the south-west end, formerly used as kitchens, stands on a different alignment from both the King’s Old Building and the Royal Palace. It may be an earlier fifteenth-century structure. Burials found there in 1998 suggest that it may have occupied the site of a church or chapel.
The Great Hall
The Great Hall, also called Parliament Hall, occupies the east side of the Inner Close. James IV built it after the King’s Old Building was completed, and it was being plastered by 1503. The building combines a conventional medieval plan with Renaissance details, including intersecting window tracery, and was constructed with the assistance of English craftsmen.
Five fireplaces and large side windows light the hall, including the dais end where the king sat. The building measures approximately 42 by 14.25 metres. Its original hammerbeam roof, a wide timber roof carried by projecting beams and arched braces, and its decorative crenellated parapet were removed in 1800 when the hall became barracks. Two floors and five cross-walls were inserted, and the windows were altered. Restoration completed in 1999 replaced the roof and parapet, reinstated the windows, and limewashed the external walls.
The Royal Palace
The Royal Palace forms the south side of the Inner Close. James V commissioned it in the 1530s, and it was largely complete by the late 1540s. It is described as the first Renaissance palace in the British Isles and combines French-inspired architecture with exuberant late Gothic detail and German-influenced decoration. Sir James Hamilton of Finnart directed the work until his execution in 1540. He financed part of the construction in return for lands and royal favours, and further work continued under Mary of Guise.
Exterior sculpture includes soldiers on the south parapet and full-size figures around the principal floor, including James V, the Devil, St Michael, Venus, and other planetary deities. The arrangement on the north, east, and south facades has been interpreted in relation to the quarters of the heavens. The western facade is undecorated and incomplete.
The palace contains separate apartments for the king and queen. Each comprised a hall, presence chamber, bedchamber, and smaller closets. Military use removed much of the Renaissance interior, although carved stone fireplaces survive.
The ceiling of the King’s Presence Chamber originally carried carved oak portrait roundels known as the Stirling Heads. After the ceiling collapsed in 1777, the heads were removed. Of an estimated 56 originals, 38 survive. Most are preserved at the castle, while three are in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. The portraits may represent a combination of kings, queens, courtiers, and classical or Biblical figures, although individual identifications remain uncertain.
The restoration of the Royal Palace recreated six royal apartments as they may have appeared in the 1540s. It also included seven hand-woven copies of the Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries, four of which hang in the restored Queen’s Presence Chamber.
The Chapel Royal
James IV established the original Chapel Royal in 1501 between the King’s Old Building and the Great Hall, farther south than the present chapel. The current building was erected north of the earlier site within a year of Prince Henry’s birth in 1594. Its position improved access from the hall and completed the fourth side of the Inner Close. Italianate arched windows are among its defining features, and William Schaw probably built it.
Valentine Jenkin decorated the Chapel Royal before Charles I’s visit in 1633. The building was later converted to military use as a dining room. Wall paintings rediscovered in the 1930s were followed by restoration work after the Second World War.
Gardens and the King’s Knot
Two gardens lie within the castle, including a southern garden with a bowling green. Below the west wall is the King’s Knot, a sixteenth-century formal garden now visible mainly through its earthworks. Its surviving octagonal mound was created by William Watts and James Murray in 1629. The former garden included hedges and knot-patterned parterres.
The gardens occupy the site of a medieval jousting arena known as the Round Table, created in imitation of the legendary court of King Arthur. The castle park formerly contained deer and white cattle. A description from 1595 records deer and white cattle in the park, together with possible hay meadows.
