stirling-1963-vol-1/05_226

Transcription

No. 192 -- CASTLES AND TOWER-HOUSES -- No. 192
alteration which destroyed the whole character of the
building. About 1809 the approach to the Castle was
remodelled to form a parade-ground, land being
purchased from the Burgh for this purpose. ¹ In 1855 the
NW. corner of the King's Old Building, including the
Douglas Room (cf. p. 218) was gutted by fire, but the
part destroyed was immediately rebuilt to the designs of
R. W. Billings, author of the Baronial and Ecclesiastical
Antiquities of Scotland. In 1893 a proposal was made to
restore, at public expense, the Chapel Royal, the Great
Hall, the Palace and the Forework, but the project came
to nothing. A more modest demand for the restoration
of the Great Hall as a memorial of the Second World
War has met with no more success.

ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION

OUTER DEFENCES (Fig. 70). The Castle is approached
from the town by way of Broad Street, Mar Place and the
Esplanade. At the upper end of the Esplanade there is a
deep, dry ditch cut in the living rock and grassed over.
This is the outermost defence. At its N. end it advances
to cover the front of the emplacement called the Spur
Battery; for the remainder of its length it runs straight,
and parallel to a fore-wall which rests on its rocky scarp.
Its S. end is commanded by a caponier, which is
provided with embrasures, and is reached from the
Guardroom Square by a passage which pierces the S.
end of the fore-wall. Further N., beyond the wooden
bridge that spans the ditch and gives access to the Castle,
may be seen a doorway cut in the rock of the scarp; this
door formerly gave access to another caponier in the
outer ditch, now removed. Within, the doorway opens
into a dog-legged stair which rises to a caponier command-
ing the inner ditch and continues thence to emerge in
the undercroft of the Over Port Battery, the emplace-
ment on the N. and higher half of the fore-wall. At the S.
end of this battery and also at the S. end of the fore-wall
there are sentry boxes (Pl. 64 A), circular turrets of stone
with ogival roofs surmounted by finials.
The New Port or outer gate (Pl. 62 A) originally
incorporated a counterpoised drawbridge (cf. p. 189),
which may be seen in the 18th-century drawing of the
Castle that is reproduced as Pl. 60. The gateway itself
is simply an archway set in the fore-wall, rusticated on
the outside and having a keystone and impost blocks on
the inside. This admits to a small quadrangular court-
yard, the Guardroom Square, bounded on the E. by the
fore-wall, on the S. by another wall and on the NW. and
N. by an angled dry ditch, from the scarp of which there
rises, on the N., the Over Port Battery and on the NW.
the Queen Anne Battery. The buildings inside the court-
yard - guardroom, stable, coach-house, sheds, etc. - are
modern, but there was a guardroom in the same position
by 1725 (cf. Pl. 121).
The inner ditch was protected by two caponiers, one
at its E. end, which still stands beneath the present
guardroom, and another at its SW. end, now removed.
This last was reached from one of the barrack-rooms
beneath the Queen Anne Battery; the existing caponier
communicates with the old guardroom beneath the Over
Port Battery.
The N. section of this inner ditch is spanned by a
bridge carried on two rusticated arches (Pl. 62 B). At the
inner end of the bridge an arched gateway and a vaulted
transe beyond it run below the batteries and give entry
to an enclosure which was called the Counterguard in
Queen Anne's time. The gateway, which is known as the
Over Port, is built of ashlar. Its archway, framed within
Doric pilasters, has imposts and a keystone, the latter
carved with the initials AR below a Crown; it is fitted
with massive iron crooks for the gate-hinges. The vaulted
transe has an arched recess at each side, and in either
recess there is a doorway; these are entrances to vaulted
guardrooms. Beneath the Over Port Battery there are
three vaulted barrack-rooms; each apartment formerly
contained two storeys, but the upper floors have been
removed while the level of the ground floor has been
raised, and the stone screens that closed their outer ends
have been replaced by modern screens of wood. The
original arrangement is seen, however, in the six vaulted
barrack-rooms below the Queen Anne Battery. All this
work was completed between 1708 and 1714 (cf. pp. 188 f.),
but a blocked-up gun-loop in the W. wall of the second
of these barrack-rooms from the N. indicates that here
at least the earlier outer defences of the Castle (cf. p. 188)
were not entirely demolished during the alterations of
Queen Anne's reign. To the SW. of the Queen Anne
Battery there is a lower battery designed to cover the
approach to the Castle (Pl. 63 B). Instead of barrack-
rooms, this battery has in its undercroft three open
casemates; the keystones of their arched openings bear
the initials A (nna) R (egina) surmounted by a Royal
crown (Pl. 64 B). On the NE. it is balanced by the
Spur Battery (Pl. 63 A), which stands at the level of
the Counterguard and covers the approach on the SE.;
its main purpose, however, is to command Stirling
Bridge, which lies about 900 yds. distant on the NE. It,
too, has casemates below it, and these are reached by way
of a short stair which descends from the level of the
Counterguard. There is a well beside these casemates.
The Spur Battery stands on the site of an earlier battery
known as "The French Spur", constructed in the 16th
or 17th century (cf. p. 184). Only a short stretch of
walling adjoining the Elphinstone Tower survives from
this earlier battery, the remainder having been rebuilt
in Queen Anne's reign. The masonry of all these 18th-
century works is of rubble with ashlar dressings.
The Counterguard is bounded on the NNW. by the
Forework, a name which may conveniently be given to
the old frontispiece of the Castle which dates from the
latter part of James IV's reign. On the SW. it is enclosed
by a rampart walk which forms part of the early 18th-
century defences. Between this rampart and the roadway
leading from the inner gate to the old gatehouse there is a
Bowling Green, which appears on Slezer's plan of about
1680 (Pl. 56). The Bowling Green is bounded on the SE.
by the Queen Anne Battery, on the NW. by the Lower

1 P.R.O., W.O. 55 / 1614 (7); W.O. 55 / 818.

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