Stirling: the Church of the Holy Rude, Argyll's Lodging, Mar's Wark, and more!

Earlier this week, Nana and I took a day trip to nearby Stirling, home of Stirling Castle (previous post). Stirling is more than just a castle, though, and the city's ample historical markers make the whole Old Town like an outdoor museum. In this post, we'll take a look at some of the Old Town's other sites.

Mar's Wark and the Erskine Church

Our first stop was Mar's Wark, a ruined 16th-century townhome built by one of the Earls of Mar, who were of the Erskine clan, making them Nana's distant distant relatives. The resemblance is uncanny.

The Earls of Mar were the keepers (stewards, basically) of Stirling Castle; this particular earl had also been the Regent of Scotland while James VI was growing up. He was a powerful dude.

The house itself would have been magnificent in its heyday. It had enormous windows with splendid views, ornate stone carvings (check out the mermaids below), and a prime location right between the Church of the Holy Rude and the castle.

 

 

 

Mar's Wark fell into disrepair after one of the later earls forfeited the home by supporting the Jacobites in 1715. The home was used as a barracks during the 1745 Jacobite Rising and suffered considerable damage during that conflict.


But 1715 wasn't the end of the Erskines in Stirling: in 1733, one Ebenezer Erskine, a radical Presbyterian, broke away from the Church of Scotland and established his own church just down the street from the Church of the Holy Rude. The original Erskine Church was replaced by a newer structure of the same name in 1825. Now, the building is a youth hostel.

Church of the Holy Rude

The Church of the Holy Rude has been Stirling's parish church for nearly 900 years. The name features the Scots version of the English "rood," referring to the cross. James VI was crowned here in 1567, making the Church of the Holy Rude one of only two still-operating churches in Britain that have been host to a coronation.

 

The Church is also the site of an impressive kirkyard, dating mostly from the 19th century. In the left background of the shot above, you can see the back of Mar's Wark.


Argyll's Lodging

Argyll's Lodging, literally a stone's throw away from Mar's Wark, is a well-preserved and partially restored 17th-century townhouse. The current building is the result of the 9th Earl of Argyll's expansion of an existing L-shaped tower house in the 1670s.

That tower house had belonged to William Alexander, 1st Earl of Stirling, the man behind Scotland's first (failed) colonies in Nova Scotia, and also the progenitor of Nova Scotia's name, flag, and coat of arms. You can see a version of that coat of arms over the door below: the design features a Native American on the left and a mermaid on the right. This motif appears again a few other times throughout the house.

 

Argyll's renovations demonstrate the man's devotion to French design. For example, his house featured what it generally believed to be the first wooden staircase in Scotland. Argyll also made extensive use of the newfangled drop-leaf tables you see in the picture below.

Now, these days drop-leaf tables usually say "I live in a tiny apartment and I shop at Ikea." In Argyll's day, they said "The heck with this, let's dance!" You see, judicious application of drop-leaf technology could turn your average dining room into a dance hall in seconds flat.

 

Today, Argyll's Lodging is managed by Historic Scotland as part of the Stirling Castle property. One ticket lets you visit both sites.

Old Town Jail

If there's anything Victorians love more than anachronistic Gothic-style architecture, it's repressing people for their own good. So it's not surprising that the leaders of Victorian Stirling poured time and money into a new-model jail/insane asylum/poorhouse shaped vaguely like a medieval castle.

These days, the Old Town Jail is a kid-centered tourist attraction featuring dozens of historical re-enactors. It was closed for renovations during our visit, but the jail's grounds allow for a pleasant stroll.

Of course, even though we were only at the jail for ten minutes, Nana couldn't help running afoul of the law. 

 

Lindisfarne Castle

It just occurred to me that Nana and I are headed on a new day-trip adventure tomorrow, and we still haven't finished blogging about the last two! So without further ado, here's another installment on Lindisfarne (you can find the first post here.) This post will deal with Lindisfarne Castle; a future post, I hope, will touch on the silliness surrounding the Lindisfarne causeway.

First, calling Lindisfarne Castle a castle is a bit of a misnomer: it's a tiny thing, really more of a fort, perched on an incongruous crag that juts out of a low field at the southern end of the island.

 

 

The castle, originally built in the 16th century, is the smallest of a string of fortresses along the coast of Northumberland designed to protect the surrounding countryside and, more importantly, the sea lanes from the Scots. Lindisfarne Castle stands guard over a natural harbor that was used as a staging area for various campaigns throughout the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries.

It also stands guard over several very strategic sheep.

Lindisfarne had at least a small role to play in nearly every major conflict in Britain during those centuries: the castle and its nearby harbor were used during the time of the Border Reivers, the English Civil Wars, and pretty much every last one of the half-dozen Jacobite Risings between 1688 and 1745. It was during this latter period that Lindisfarne Castle was somewhat farcically captured by an overwhelming force of two rowdy Jacobites who managed to hold the fort for about a day before surrendering to Hanoverian troops.

In the 1900s, the castle was converted into an utterly idiosyncratic country home, which now belongs to the National Trust. When we visited, they had a little Halloween scavenger hunt running, in which children (and childish adults like us) were tasked with finding a selection of ghoulish little things that had been hidden throughout the property.

At the foot of the castle, you can a modern example of some traditional Northumbrian architecture: a row of sheds made from the bottoms of herring boats that have been cut in half. Easy to waterproof and aerodynamic, both of which are important if you want your stuff to live through a winter on the North Sea!

Edinburgh Castle

(Sorry, Jillian, I have no creative titles for this one!)

Justin and I joined up with a trip sponsored by the Edinburgh University History Society that got us discounted admission to Edinburgh Castle, site of much history and many tourists. Unfortunately, this trip and tour were a long time ago, and I've been remiss in getting them posted, so I have no idea how much I'll remember.

Edinburgh Castle sits high above the city of Edinburgh. How high, you ask, especially Justin's skeptical Pittsburgh relations, whose driveways frequently rate as black diamonds come winter?

That high. I think even Pittsburghers must be impressed.

With the hill, and the commanding view of the water, one can therefore guess that this has been an important defensive position for a significant period of time. One would be correct. Way to go, one! According to the castle web site, the oldest evidence of human settlement on the castle hilltop dates back to 900 BC, with the fortress "Din Eidyn" ("Edwin's Fort") first appearing around 600 BC.

(Side note to Tolkein nerds: Din Eidyn... Dunedain. Warrior men of the North. Make your own call).

The oldest building on site, going back to 1130, is St. Margaret's Chapel, a tiny whitewashed stone room dedicated to the former queen of Scotland. You can just make it out on the far right of this image here. See how the texture of the stone is rougher?

Nearby you can find Mons Meg, a 550 year old medieval siege gun built at Mons, Belgium, and quite frankly not something I would have liked to have had to lug up the hill. I am, however, perfectly happy to pose around it in various undignified ways.

Nor would I have liked to have lugged the ammunition.

The castle was the site of several important battles during what Americans best know as "the Braveheart period," AKA the reign of Edwards I through III. (As our tour guide at the castle put it, "There are three types of movies: movies which tell the history, movies which are based on the history but take some liberties, and movies which make no attempt at historical accuracy whatsoever. Braveheart falls into the third category.") The relevance of the castle at this time is demonstrated by the following text from the castle web site:

1296
Edward I of England invades Scotland, capturing the
castle after a three-day siege.
1314
The Scots, under Robert the Bruce, recapture the castle.
1334
The English retake the castle.
1341
The Scots take it back again.

If I recall correctly, at least one of these sieges involved people boiling human waste to fling down on the enemy at the castle gates. Hey, why waste oil or pitch?

The Great Hall was built in 1511. Justin and I spent most of the time in there having flashbacks to Yale College dining halls, and wondering if we had remembered to swipe our meal cards.

(That's Edinburgh Castle at the top, Yale below).

King James I of England (James VI of Scotland, which, let's face it, is pretty irritating to keep track of) was born at the castle, in a tiny little chamber which we did not photograph, as indoor photography is frowned upon. It was tiny, and entirely paneled in painted wood, with a nice view down off the hill that I bet his mother Mary got awfully tired of while stuck in there in labor.

As they did at many UK historical sites, the Victorians took it upon themselves to improve upon the original. Here, you can see how a medieval wall becomes, halfway up, a Victorian addition:

The castle is also home to the Scottish National War Memorial

and the Honours (with a U!) of Scotland, which in English means the crown, sceptre (not scepter!), and sword of the monarchs of Scotland, along with some really nice royal jewelry. It is an interesting quirk of history, I think, that Scotland maintained its independence in the wake of the wars mentioned above - the not-really Braveheart wars. It was only after James VI went over to become James I (I told you that would be annoying) that the shenanigans started. You would think that a Scottish family on the throne of England would be good news for the Scots, but alas, it was not to be. (Although in all fairness, you could probably say that the problems really began when the Scottish family came off the throne; see Justin's earlier post for review. There will be a quiz.)

Yes, that's me in the lower right. Do you think I would make a good guard? See how vigilant I am!

On second thought, no. It was too cold.

More about Jacobites than you ever wanted to know

In Scotland, as soon as you hear the word "Jacobite," you can kiss the next twenty minutes goodbye. (Don't worry, I'll try to have you out in under ten.)

I was thinking yesterday about how to parcel out the remaining posts on our recent trip to the Highlands, but I couldn't find an easy way around the Jacobite problem--that is, the fact that you can't spit in Scotland without hitting some part of Jacobite history, and no single episode in that history makes a lick of sense if you don't know the whole (very complicated) tale. So in the interests of our American readers, here's a brief introduction to the history of the Jacobite cause.

It all started with the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603 (Shakespeare's time--I told you this was a long story). Her successor was James I of England and Ireland, who was also King James VI of Scotland, and who ruled as the joint monarch of both nations. This was the beginning of the Stuart dynasty.

James's son Charles I made the regrettable mistake of crossing both Parliament and the Protestants--the latter with his Catholic-style reorganizations of the nominally Protestant Anglican church, the former with his dictatorial style of government. Thus the English Civil War, which ends with Chuck getting his head lopped off by Oliver Cromwell and company, who established a Protestant dictatorship under the guise of a republican "Commonwealth."

(Still with me?)

The Scots, however, didn't recognize Cromwell as their ruler, and instead crowned Charles II King of Scotland, but Cromwell quickly drove the new Scottish king into exile. Charles II had the last laugh, though, as after Cromwell's death in 1658, the Commonwealth collapsed, and Charles II was invited back to the throne (albeit with many of the old royal powers now delegated to Parliament) in the Restoration of 1660.

(Whew.)

Charles was a controversial ruler, though, who tried to take back the powers given to Parliament in 1660 and who converted to Roman Catholicism on his deathbed. This didn't sit well with most folks in Britian, who hadn't fought long and hard to establish Protestantism for nothing.

Oh, the Scottish Covenanters also rose up in rebellion against Chuckie II around this time.

Charles' successor, James II/VI, was a Catholic, and even worse, he was even more of a wannabe dictator than Charles. The last straw, though, was the fact that he produced a Catholic heir, whom the Jacobites (Latin: supporters of Jacobus, aka James) would refer to as James III/VII, and others would call the Old Pretender.

(Deep breath.)

So the English kicked James II/VI out in favor of her Protestant daughter, Anne II, and her Dutch husband William of Orange (the namesakes of William and Mary College in Virginia). This event, the Glorious Revolution of 1688, also established Parliament, not the monarch, as the main source of power in Britain.

And here's where all heck breaks loose. The Highland Scots, many of whom were still Catholic, plus various groups of Catholics and conservatives throughout the British Isles (most notably the Irish), didn't recognize William and Mary or any members of the succeeding Hannoverian dynasty. Instead, they thought Jimmy 2-6's son, James III/VII (the Old Pretender), was the rightful king, and spent several decades, with the help of England's enemies abroad, trying to restore him to the thone. (Rob Roy MacGregor, made famous in the US by a film starring Liam Neeson, was loosely associated with the cause.)

Luckily for the English, the Old Pretender was pretty comfortable living it up down in Italy with his wealthy Polish wife. But Jimmy 3-7's son Charles Edward Stuart (aka Bonnie Prince Charlie, aka Charles III) was another matter. He brought his big ego and his inflated sense of honor to Scotland in 1745, where he orchestrated a massive uprising of Highlanders, which after a brilliant start fizzled out very quickly, finally ending with the brutal defeat of the Jacobites at the Battle of Culloden (near Inverness) in 1746.

1745 is as big a date in Scottish history as 1776 is in US history. It was the last time any group of Scots rose up for independence, and it was the beginning of the end for the old Highland way of life. In the immediate aftermath of the battle, the government troops ransacked the Highlands, and things there were never quite the same. Many former Jacobites fled to the US and Canada (the McKinnons, for example, helped Bonnie Prince Charlie escape the mainland, and paid dearly for it, hence their exodus to North America), as well as to Australia and New Zealand.

Lately, the Jacobite cause has been resurrected as part of the growing push for Scottish independence. The 1745 uprising, however, is not nearly so black-and-white as it seems--there were, for example, more Scots fighting for the government than there were for the Jacobites--a fact which I hope will become clear in our next several posts.

Anyway, there's the quick-and-dirty version of the Jacobite story. More than you probably ever wanted to know about it, and I doubt I brought it in under 10 minutes--but enough, I hope, to make sense of what's to come.