On Saturday, despite a forecast for heavy rain and thick cloud, we ventured to Stirling to visit Stirling Castle. There was a Fool's Fair planned for the afternoon for the Easter weekend, and though the castle is always a busy place, this made it even more highly trafficked. We waited in an impressive queue to get into the car park...so long in fact that about half-way up the hill David's parents gave up and just got out of the car. By the time we had located a loo and suited up in our rain gear, though, David had parked and was waiting for us at the entrance.
We started our tour in the interesting exhibitions in the castle vaults, which give an excellent overview of Scottish history and the part that Stirling Castle played in that history over the centuries, and also gave us a wee bit of shelter from the rain. Like most historic properties in Scotland, there were a number of exhibits geared towards kids, but at Stirling Castle they really go above and beyond in the family friendly category, and there's a whole section of the vault geared towards the 7 and under crowd. Emma and John usually enjoy these areas just as much as Leah does, and I think they sometimes use Leah as a "free pass" to gain access to the various games and hidey holes and dress up stations meant for little ones. In this vault, Emma and Leah were especially taken with a puzzle that matches various natural products that are used to create textile colors (lapis lazuli, cochineal beetles, etc). When the puzzle pieces that depict a certain natural element used to make color were matched to the right region on a world map, that color would light up. When all the puzzle pieces were matched correctly, a spring on the back of the map would release and all the pieces would shoot back into a receptacle at the map's base. Both girls were equally impressed, and played several rounds!
Once we made it through the vaults on textiles, musical instruments, carvings and court jesters, we continued up through the upper parts of the castle, towards the Great Hall, which was built by James IV, and the Chapel Royal. This chapel is where the infant Mary Queen of Scots was crowned in 1543, though probably not in the same building that stands there today. On this day, the chapel had been turned into a puppet theatre, and was stuffed full of damp toddlers in wellies cheering on a sock monk (yes, a puppet monk in full saffron robes) as he decided whether to give his pet bear a sweetie. I'm sure it wasn't what James IV had intended as he went about improving Stirling Castle to create a space fit for a European monarch, but the toddlers and parents inside looked happy enough to be the beneficiaries of his grand design.
After the puppet show, we went back out to the courtyard to partake of the court jesters and magicians doing various magic tricks and shaping balloons into swords. We watched for a bit, and procured two balloon swords for Leah, though John surrendered one of them just a few minutes later to a weepy little boy who was holding the limp remnants of a balloon sword in his hands, having popped his by poking his father repeatedly in the nose.
Next we entered the Royal Palace, and not only were were happy to have another place to dry out a bit, we were excited to see this part of the castle as it was being renovated when we were here in 2011. The palace is now completed, after having been restored to the way it would have looked in the 16th century. We visit a number of castles in Scotland but a good percentage are in ruins, so it's great to have the opportunity to see one with a roof and textiles and furnishings, even if much of it is recreated. Also, the Royal Palace was built by James V for his French wife Mary of Guise in about 1540, and because I find her story especially compelling I was looking forward to the opportunity to see the space as it might have looked during her lifetime. Mary of Guise was actually the second wife of James V (his first wife died soon after their marriage and relocation to Scotland), and she was also the mother of Mary Queen of Scots. James V died just a few days after his daughter Mary was born, so Mary of Guise (as dowager queen) lived in the palace with the infant queen for a number of years on their own. The Palace is a set of six rooms (royal apartments), three for the king and three for the queen. Each set starts with an outer hall, which was a fairly public room, followed by an inner hall where the king or queen would grant audiences, and then finally a bedchamber. Even these rooms were apparently fairly public, however, and so signage in the palace indicated that Mary of Guise actually slept in a very small closet off to the side of her bedchamber. The beds themselves were enrobed in layers of tapestries, but still they didn't look especially cozy so I could imagine that a small, hidden bedroom off to one side was pretty appealing.
These rooms are now full of tapestries, many of which depict unicorns, or St. Cecelia and St. Clare, all of whom are associated with Mary of Guise. There are also a number of replicas of Stirling heads, which are wooden carvings of historic figures that used to adorn the ceilings of the Palace. Originally, 37 heads adorned the ceiling, and 34 of them still exist. Some of them are on display at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, but others were on display in an exhibit above the Palace, and Emma and I enjoyed going through this section slowly, while David and John were off with Leah, in search of a replacement balloon sword after hers popped with a loud bang that ricocheted through the Outer Hall of the Palace as she was taking part in a Legos activity.
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| The ceiling of the Queen's Outer Hall. |
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| Leah in the King's Outer Hall, which was playing host to a Lego activity. |
Towards the late afternoon, the rain dried up and we took the kids on the outer walls of the castle, which afford a magnificent view of the surrounding countryside. Standing on top of the ramparts, you can really appreciate the oft-used maxim, "Hold Stirling Castle and you control Scotland."
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