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 The Palace from the Garden |
Visitors to Stirling Castle should be aware that the Palace has been closed as part of a major project to present the King’s and Queen’s Lodgings as they might have appeared in the mid 1500s. The Palace will reopen in March 2011. The remainder of this page reflects the Palace as it was before closure: it will be updated in 2011.
On 1 January 1537 James V married Madeleine, daughter of the King of France. Her ill health led to her death in July that year, and in 1538 James returned to France to marry Madeleine's adopted sister, Mary de Guise.
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Marriage gave James V an accommodation problem at Stirling Castle. The King's apartments were in what is today called the King's Old Building, built by James IV. James IV probably later built Queen's apartments, but James V wanted something to show that Scotland could match the best he had seen in France.
The result was the Palace at Stirling Castle. Work began in about 1538 and it is unlikely that James saw it in its complete form by the time of his death in December 1542, just six days after the birth of his daughter, Mary Queen of Scots in Linlithgow Palace.
Completion of the Palace at Stirling fell instead to James' widow, Mary de Guise,and the resulting building is both remarkable and spectacular. The Palace is in the form of a hollow square. At its centre is the paved area that has become known as the Lion's Den. The name probably comes from the importance of the lion in Scottish heraldry. An alternative theory that a lion given to James V in France in 1537 was housed here seems unlikely.
It comes as a surprise to discover that such an imposing building was designed around just six main rooms. The King and Queen each had a matched range of three rooms. Each had a large and fairly public room, the Guard Hall, in which a range of functions took place. Passing a guard brought you to the smaller Presence Chamber, while beyond that lay the bedchamber.
The Queen's lodgings are contained within the south range of the Palace, with her Bedchamber occupying the south east corner of the building. Linked to it in the east range is the King's Bedchamber, while his Presence Chamber occupies the north east corner, and his Guard Hall occupies much of the north range of the Palace. Both bedchambers had private rooms attached.
 The Queen's Guard Hall Before Stripping Back |
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 The Queen's Guard Hall At End 2005 After Stripping Back |
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 Queen's Presence Chamber, April 2007 |
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 West Gallery, End 2005 |
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 Passage Under the Palace |
These "closets" were probably a private study, a comfortable bedroom and the en suite. Those attached to the King's Bedchamber still exist, overlooking the Lion's Den.
Historic Scotland intend to restore the royal lodgings: the Queen's lodgings as they would have been when used by Mary of Guise, and the King's lodgings to their condition when used by her grandson, James VI. The first major step towards this was taken during 2005, when the all the rooms were stripped right back to the stone shell. This comes as a shock to anyone who had admired the beautiful Queen's Guard Hall as it was before and now finds themselves looking at bare stone walls and naked ceiling supports. But the end result will doubtless be worth it...
The process has also allowed much more to be discovered about the structure of the Palace including the suggestion that parts of it were built around an existing building. The aim over the coming few years is to keep as much of the Palace as possible open to the public during the long process of restoration.
By April 2007 the exterior of the west side of the palace had been swathed in scaffolding as work progressed, now focussing very much on the exterior stonework, while to the untutored eye not a lot seemed to have changed within the palace since late 2005.
By the beginning of 2008, the exterior scaffolding had gone, leaving a restored exterior with its three highly decorated and beautifully designed facades. These face south over the Bowling Green Garden, east over the Outer Close, and north over the Inner Close.
But the magnificence of three of the Palace's ranges do not extend to its fourth, the west range. Visitors today will find that this comprises the Gallery, a corridor linking the King's and Queen's Guard Halls to one another and to the main entrance of the Palace at the corner of the Inner Close. This corridor also gives access (depending on the stage of the restoration work) to the west side of the Lion's Den, and to an open area with spectacular views now called the Ladies' Hole.
But the outer face of the west range is far from grand, looking for all the world like the back wall of a 1930s cinema. Except that 1930s cinemas don't usually appear to have been cobbled together from leftover bits of other buildings, with jagged wall ends visible in at least two places.
There are accounts of a west range of the Palace in a state of collapse in 1583. But it seems unclear whether the Palace was simply left unfinished on this side after James V's death; whether it was finished and parts subsequently slipped over the edge of the castle rock cliffs; or whether the older buildings into which the southern and possibly the western sides of the Palace were fitted later collapsed.
It is still possible to see parts of some of these earlier buildings, both in the shape of the Prince's Tower from James IV's Forework and in the basement level rooms accessible from the dark passage leading from the Outer Close under the Palace to the Ladies' Hole.
In 1700 major alterations were made to the Palace to insert a floor of accommodation for the Castle Governor in what had been the roof. The original grand entrance to the Palace was reduced in size to make room for stairs leading up to the Governor's apartments. Later in the castle's life the Palace was used for military accommodation, though without the further extensive alterations suffered by the Great Hall and Chapel Royal.
 The Palace Seen from the West |
