Storming Stirling Castle

Okay, I didn’t exactly storm Stirling Castle (click here for the castle’s website). I showed the online ticket I bought yesterday and casually walked in. I doubt warriors who storm castles first pay the admission fee and then saunter in after respectfully showing proof of purchase.

A garden at Stirling Castle
A garden at Stirling Castle

Be that as it may, the “Storming Stirling Castle” was right there. How could I pass it up? Throughout history, many castles have been stormed, some of them multiple times, with varying degrees of success.

Besides, writing “Storming Stirling” gives me frequent alliteration points. It would have been criminal not to use it. Well, possibly not criminal. But I’m not familiar with all of the laws here in Scotland, so who knows? I don’t want to take any chances.

Yesterday, I told you I told you I saved Stirling’s top tourist attraction for today. Now you know what that attraction is. Or, if you don’t know, reading comprehension skills have declined far more than I realized. I blame it on social media. Harrumph.

Both of the guidebooks I’m using highly recommend Stirling Castle, which, for the benefit of the reading-comprehension-challenged, is the star attraction referenced above.

But first, I was early for the time slot on my castle ticket, so I made a short stop along the way.

Kirkyard Cemetery

A part of the kirkyard cemetery
A part of the kirkyard cemetery

A little below the castle is a kirk (church) with a kirkyard (churchyard) cemetery. The grand old church, blackened with age, wasn’t yet open for the day. I guess God likes to sleep in. So I wasn’t able to go in. I might visit it after leaving the castle.

Weathered grey headstones dot the cemetery. The sky this morning was uniformly grey. A bit of a haze lightly veiled the distant scenery. The weather provided a superb atmosphere for wandering through an old cemetery. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Another part of the kirkyard cemetery
Another part of the kirkyard cemetery

But the weather didn’t serve all purposes. The kirkyard is up a hill so it provides excellent views of the church, castle, town, and surrounding landscape. In addition, there is a small, grave-free hill in the middle of the cemetery. That provided even better views. However, the haze rendered the distant scenery less clear than it normally would have been even with my old eyes.

Nevertheless, I could make out somewhat shrouded green meadows in one direction, backed by rolling green hills. In another direction, I could make out a more rugged mountain ridge. Despite the slight haze, it’s quite lovely.

A view from the small hill in the kirkyard cemetery
A view from the small hill in the kirkyard cemetery

Stirling Castle

When I bought my ticket to the castle, I also splurged £2 on an audioguide to be downloaded on my phone. I think the audio snippets duplicate those on a physical audioguide you can rent at the castle. At the end of each segment, the voice said “To pause, press the red button, to continue, press the green button.” But it didn’t display red or green buttons on my screen, just a button to go back to the main menu, which it did on its own anyway at the end of the audio snippet. Technology. What are you going to do?

A couple of the buildings around the Inner Close of Stirling Castle
A couple of the buildings around the Inner Close of Stirling Castle

Admission to Stirling Castle also includes a free guided tour. At the time of day I arrived (morning) the tours started every half hour. They last about one hour. I went on one. There was some overlap in the information provided on the tour and the audioguide, but not much. The tour stayed mostly outside of the buildings in the castle. The guide talked about the history and purpose of each building from there, along with providing some general historical information about the castle as a whole and the battles it was involved in.

For example, I learned that records first reference a castle on that site in 1110. However, the oldest structure still standing in Stirling Castle dates from 1381. That’s not too shabby in the historical department, I’d say.

The guide took us into only two buildings. They were impressive, but mostly empty of exhibits and furnishings, but one had a lot of chairs, which we were mercifully able to sit on while the guide spoke in that building. (“Mercifully,” you ask? Hey, I’m old. It was an hour-long tour and I had done a lot of walking even before the tour.)

The otherwise emptiness of the interiors of these two buildings left a lot of room for a tour, as well as for people who were on their own, to enter. That required considerable space because the tour I was on was quite large, I’m guessing there were close to 100 people on it.

Throughout the tour, the guide spoke without amplification. He had a voice that didn’t sound booming but still projected quite well. I could hear him even at those stops on the tour where I was near the back of the large group. I wondered if he had stage training and if the other guides at the castle were as good in that regard.

Great Hall of Stirling Castle

The back of the Great Hall
The back of the Great Hall

One of the buildings the guide took us into is the Great Hall. It served several functions over the years. It started as a royal ceremonial hall. I seem to remember that during some period it also hosted government ceremonial functions, but I might be misremembering that.

At one time, the Great Hall served as regimental barracks. During that period, they removed the original roof and built three levels in the previously soaring hall. When the military vacated the premises, in preparation to open it as a historical tourist attraction, they ripped out the added levels and interior walls and returned it to the original single, large hall, including a restored roof.

Original documents guided them in this work to recreate the Great Hall as it was. This includes constructing the wood roof without the use of any nails. Instead, the wood beams are held together with hand-carved wood pegs.

The exterior of the Great Hall of Stirling Castle is currently a pinkish-orange colour referred to as “king’s gold.” That wasn’t the colour it was for I don’t know how many centuries. During that time it was raw grey stone.

Interior of the Great Hall
Interior of the Great Hall

In 1999, the people who maintain the castle put a colour wash over it to cover it with the king’s gold colour. According to the guide, when the scaffolding came down and the locals saw the colour, they were furious. They thought it was hideous. Many people wrote angry letters to their members of parliament and everyone else responsible for administering Stirling Castle.

Ironically, that was the original colour. Old records of the pigments used when the Great Hall was originally built show that that was the hue applied to the building then. Not only that, but, again according to the guide, all of the buildings around the main courtyard, known as the “Inner Close,” except for the palace, sported the same colour.

Before he told us the story about the colour protest or that it was the original colour, the guide asked the group, by a show of hands, how many liked the colour and how many disliked it. I was one of the very few to raise his hand as liking it. Most people disliked it. I guess I have old tastes.

The reason Historic Environment Scotland, the organization responsible for the castle, didn’t return the other buildings to their original colour is that that colour wash has to be renewed every ten to twenty years. They couldn’t afford that ongoing expense. All of the other buildings are currently raw stone.

Other Stirling Castle Buildings

Interior of the Royal Chapel at Stirling Castle
Interior of the Royal Chapel at Stirling Castle

Another of the buildings beside the Inner Close is the Royal Chapel. It too has been restored to its original condition (except for the exterior colour) and is quite handsome.

Yet another building beside Inner Close is referred to as “King’s Old Building.” It’s a house that King James IV had built as his home in 1496, which was before most of the other main buildings still in Stirling Castle were built.

For some time, the King’s Old Building served as the headquarters of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders Regiment. Today it serves as a museum dedicated to that regiment.

I said that the palace wasn’t the same king’s gold colour, but that’s only partly true. That was the base colour. But the palace has more than 250 statues mounted on its walls. According to the guide, they were decorated with gold leaf and eye-popping colours.

The King's Old Building
The King’s Old Building

The tour didn’t go inside the palace. But I did. I used the audioguide to get information about its contents. The palace contains the apartments of the king and queen. The queen’s apartment has several furnishings and decorations. Those decorations include some beautiful tapestries (more on that later).

The king’s apartment is sparsely furnished. That was intentional. It’s not certain if King James lived to see the completion of his apartment. So the sparse furnishings are intended to represent his death. At least, that’s the story presented at Stirling Castle today. Maybe the current keepers of the castle just don’t have the funds for more furnishings.

Tapestries in the queen's apartment
Tapestries in the queen’s apartment

The ceiling of the king’s inner hall is decorated with a series of carved, painted heads known as the Stirling Heads. These are hand-carved reproductions. They tried to match the original colours as best as possible from what fragments of paint remained on the surviving originals. Most of those wood originals (sans the original paint) are usually on display in a gallery upstairs. When I visited, some had signs saying they were reproductions because the originals were on loan to another museum (I forget which one).

King James V commissioned the Stirling Heads to prove his right to the throne. They represented his alleged notable ancestors in his bloodline and included other kings and noblemen and noblewomen, a few Roman emperors, and Hercules. Yeah, sure. If I have some relief sculptures carved claiming, without proof, that they show my bloodline back to Jesus can I become Pope? And, if so, would I have to become a Christian? Or can an atheist Jew become a pope? And would I still have to let visitors into the Vatican? I’m something of a recluse.

Reproductions of the Stirling Heads on the ceiling in one of the rooms of the king's apartment
Reproductions of the Stirling Heads on the ceiling in one of the rooms of the king’s apartment

On the tour, the guide pointed to a building that he said was the original kitchen. But it was only the “everyday” kitchen. I don’t think the public can go in there today. “Everyday” was the word used by the guide. He meant that it was the kitchen used to serve the normal residents of the castle. You know, everyday people like a king, queen, and courtiers.

According to the guide, there were also the “Great Kitchens.” These spanned a large area and were pressed into service when there were large ceremonies at the castle. The Great Hall could seat up to 500 people and the everyday kitchen wasn’t adequate to feed them all. What self-respecting king would be willing to let his guests leave hungry?

The Great Kitchens were eventually torn down and replaced with other buildings. However, more recent excavations found the original ovens. Today, the rooms are open to the public and decorated with tables, fake food, and mannequins positioned as if they were preparing food. It’s a bit hokey, but interesting.

The Great Kitchens
The Great Kitchens

The tapestries in the queen’s chambres I mentioned above are copies of the Unicorn Tapestries that are on display in The Cloisters in New York.

The reproductions were hand-woven in Scotland, at least one on a loom set up in Stirling Castle itself, using cartoons1 made from the originals. The seven tapestry recreations took 13 years to complete. In addition to Scotland and England, they brought in weavers from Australia, Canada, Japan, and the United States to do the work. I know this because Stirling Castle has an exhibit on the tapestries in a building away from the Inner Close.

It’s quite a terrific castle and that’s not even including the great views available because Stirling Castle occupies the high ground on a hill in Stirling.

I spent more than two and a half hours in Stirling Castle and didn’t tire of it. There is more to say about the castle, but I’m not going to say it because, a) I forgot much of it, and b) this post is already long. Stay tuned for my afternoon post about other things.


  1. The exhibit didn’t explain this, or if it did, I missed it, but I learned from a visit to the Royal Tapestry Factory in Madrid on a previous trip that “cartoon” is what tapestry weavers call the template used to guide the weaving of a tapestry. ↩︎

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