Breaking News: New Discoveries on Scotland's Best Preserved City Wall.
A blocked medieval room in a lost bastion!
Stirling’s City Walls
Stirling is 900 years old this year and there can be do doubt that its Scotland’s bloodiest spot. If you want to go north or south you have to do it at Stirling and if you want to stop an army doing the same you do it at Stirling. Because of this Stirling has Scotland’s best preserved city walls, which astonishingly have never been fully recorded. I have written before about our ongoing work to record and reveal the walls over a series of blogs.
Stirling’s walls were constructed in the 1540s to stop Henry VIIIth’s troops from forcing the infant Mary Queen of Scots to marry his son…the Rough Wooing. They were used again in the mid-17th century and finally against Bonnie Prince Charlie’s Jacobites in 1746. But they were never seriously altered which means they are essentially the 1540s design which means they are potentially of international significance given how rapidly artillery changed.
My colleague in this research has been Dom Farrugia who is studying the walls for this thesis and of course all of you who help us dig or fund this blog.
Defending Stirling
The British army mapped the castle and town a number of times. The earliest of these maps called The Town and Castle of Stirling was undertaken at some point prior to 1708 as it does not contain post-1708 works. This map shows five gates into the burgh and eight bastions or towers on the wall. Unfortunately the map lacks details. Just before the cemetery, the wall was replaced by Cowane’s Hospital an almshouse completed by 1648 whose southern boundary is in effect the burgh wall. And this forms Stirling’s only surviving medieval gate.
A Lost Bastion
The focus today is on the bastion next to the Old Town Jail which was partially destroyed by its construction. A 17th century painting clearly shows a roofed building. The image below shows our new bastion (left) and also the Alan’s Primary School one (right)
Stirling in the Time of the Stuarts by Johannes Vosterman (1643-1699) courtesy of the Smith Museum and Art Galley compared with the John Laye Map (by Dominic Farrugia).
The structures also appears in a couple of 18th century illustrations and in one its roofed.
But despite this no one ever spotted it before!
Come Inside
This overlooked and lost bastion lies to the rear of Mary Erskine in a wee cemetery.
The interior of the possible bastion behind the Youth Hostel.
And outside!
and here’s a wee video of the outside.
New Excavation
So obviously we wanted to dig this to find out more….the site is owned by the Council and leased to the Youth Hostel and is also a Scheduled Monument. So three sets of permissions to negotiate…we got there eventually, but I first started asking in 2020! The dig happened last week…we kept it quiet because it was a very small hole.
We confirmed the presence of the bastion, there is a thinner wall, projecting out from the city wall but also identified a forgotten door and a filled up room. This allowed access to a gun loop.
The new doorway is in blue, threshold at the bottom and lintel at the top.
and here’s a wee video of the results
I cannot express how exciting this is, what is in that room, who used it last, is there graffiti? Before we started Scotland had four surviving burgh wall bastions of which two were in Stirling. We now have fragments of seven and five are in Stirling. This is a fantastic discovery and of genuine international significance. Wow!
What’s Next?
Well if everyone agrees we want to dig more and uncover the extent of the surviving building and open up the room! Watch this space.
Conclusions
Stirling is amazing and we are surrounded by internationally important archaeology. It is just lying there to be picked up and explored, but you make the difference, where you read this blog or wield a spade…..without you it would still be there overlooked and ignored!
Have a question? Get in contact!
Superb work Murray 👏 keep up the good work. Stunning finds
Absolutely amazing Murray!