Stirling Castle

Stirling Castle stands on an intrusive crag of quartz-dolerite, part of the Stirling Sill, with steep cliffs falling away on three sides. That position guarded the farthest downstream crossing of the River Forth until the 1890s, and it made the rock a royal residence and administrative centre from around 1110. Most of what survives, though, belongs to the Stewart kings of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. James IV completed the Great Hall about 1503 — reckoned the grandest secular building of late-medieval Scotland — and raised the Forework gatehouse around 1506. In the 1530s James V began the Royal Palace, directed by Sir James Hamilton of Finnart with French masons, its walls crowded with carved figures of the king and the planetary deities. It is often called the first Renaissance palace in the British Isles. The castle threaded through the Wars of Independence, changing hands after the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297 and Edward I’s siege engine Warwolf in 1304. The infant Mary, Queen of Scots was crowned in the Chapel Royal on 9 September 1543. After 1800 the rock became a barracks. Historic Environment Scotland now cares for the scheduled monument, which drew 609,698 visitors in 2019.