Stirling Castle | The Most Important Castle in Scottish History - VIRTUAL TOUR

Welcome to the incredible Stirling Castle at Stirling in Scotland and I'm going to take you on a virtual tour around my favourite castle in all of Scotland, unmissable on any trip. So welcome to Stirling Castle, roughly one hour from Edinburgh and one hour from Glasgow and it is possible from below the castle here to walk up but I'm not going to bother with that, I'm going to jump in the car and I'm going to drive up and park on the esplanade where you will get stunning views of these earthworks which are the remnants of old formal gardens long since disappeared. And we have arrived at the esplanade of Stirling Castle greeted by a statue of King Robert the Bruce, probably Scotland's most famous king and the esplanade is also a fantastically handy place to park but from here you get the first views from this castle which show how much it dominates the landscape in this area. Away over in the distance towards the sun is Edinburgh, directly below is the River Forth and the Ochil Hills in the distance. So the strategic importance of Stirling Castle becomes very very obvious. Now we're going to make our way over towards the outer defences, over the moat and into the castle itself. Now this is completely unscripted, I'm sure I will make plenty of mistakes but hopefully I will give you a really good understanding of Stirling Castle and also hopefully you'll understand why it's my favourite castle to take guests to. But before we go inside, the second statue over here is dedicated to the Princess Louises who later became the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and they were based here at Edinburgh, at Stirling Castle until 1964. So this is to commemorate those who were lost during what was called the Boer War in South Africa at the end into the beginning of the 19th and early 20th centuries. And then we're going to cross over at the outer defences where would have been originally a drawbridge which takes us over a moat, which was always a dry moat, it never had water in it, but in the edges you'll see little windows which are called the caponniers, so these were firing positions from within the castle so you could potentially fire upon any attackers. In the distance there's also that little projected wall which is called the French Spur which dates back to the 1550s. Mary de Guise, the mother of Mary Queen of Scots. This is the gatehouse courtyard and the beginning of what's called the forework, so these are the sort of inner defences so if you make it through the front door you then have to contend with two further gateways here before you then make it to what would be called the official entrance, the forework gatehouse into the actual medieval castle of Stirling. But before we go in there we're going to make our way down into Queen Anne's Gardens and we get an incredible view of the royal palaces built through the 1530s and the 1540s. This was the first Renaissance palace ever built in the UK, built by King James V for his new French bride Mary de Guise and she came with lots of money so she probably paid for it herself but she went on to give birth to a daughter called Mary Queen of Scots and she took the throne at just a few days old when her father James V died unexpectedly. It's an absolutely stunning building adorned with over a hundred statues and the buildings running along the wall here on the right hand side are the casemates. These are bomb-proof bunkers and along the top of the wall would have been cannons pointing out towards the esplanade and the main entrance where we've just come in. You've also got these beautiful beech trees which are absolutely resplendent in the autumn, lovely copper colours and the original gatehouse which was built at the beginning of the 1500s. Those two twin towers, they were originally twice the height that they are today so even more spectacular. Add to that the exterior of all the buildings would have been whitewashed so beautiful golden white buildings with a golden orangey yellow coloured great hall visible from miles around and down below us there you can see where we started those lumps and bumps the king and queen's knot the remnants of old formal gardens that the royal family could go and enjoy in times of peace because up here space was at a premium so most of the room within the castle needed to be used for important defensive purposes but beyond is a golf course these days which is called the king's park and that was originally the royal hunting grounds that's where the royal family would go out and hunt deer wild boar go hawking and when they weren't killing people they loved nothing more than killing animals from here we'll take a little walk along the defensive walls which is going to take us towards the viewpoint that looks down over the old town of sterling itself and the old town of sterling is a lot like edinburgh in that it's built on this formation which is called a crag and tail so they made the use of the slope that runs away from the castle to build the old medieval town so you can see the esplanade where the cars are parked and then directly below is we've got the valley cemetery the drummond pleasure grounds which was built in the 19th century and then again a stunning view over the king's park the old king and queen's knot gardens and a way out towards loch lomond so you imagine that castle painted in a bright white lime colour sitting up here on a big outcrop of volcanic rock with views out in the direction of edinburgh and towards glasgow and loch lomond no one would have been able to sneak up on you without you knowing about it it's absolutely gorgeous we're going to climb up these little steps in a moment but before we do another beautiful view over queen anne's garden and the royal palaces now the bit that we're just climbing over the top of is called the casemates and the casemates were bomb-proof bunkers built at the beginning of the 1700s in response to the threat of a group called the jacobites now we had a king of scotland called james the second sorry james the seventh and in england he was called james the second and he was overthrown during what was called the glorious revolution of 1688 because he was roman catholic and for lots of other reasons as well but he fled into exile in france and he attempted over the following years to try and win back his throne for his family and for him the house of stewart now if you supported their restoration james in latin was a jacobus so you became known as a jacobite which is where the word jacobite comes from so sterling and edinburgh and various other castles were heavily fortified to withstand a jacobite siege now these cannons are here more as ornaments they are later and you'll see there's a cipher on the top which is a gr 111 george the third so these date to around 1760 to 1820 during the reign of george the third but that's why this entire forework and outer defenses was rebuilt to make sure that the jacobites could not seize this castle and from here in the distance is the national wallace monument built between 1861 and 1869 it commemorates scotland's most famous famous freedom fighter sir william wallace and it was from there an outcrop of rock called the abbey craig that he watched the english approach in the 13th century prior to defeating them at the battle of sterling bridge but look at that for a view it is absolutely mind-blowing and as i say imagine that all covered in a white lime wash those two towers twice the height that they are today i'm kind of jumping all over the place at the moment i'm back in queen anne's gardens which you probably recognize and i want to take you into the casemates which are these bomb-proof barracks that i mentioned earlier on or bomb-proof bunkers and within here you'll see a copy of an incredible map which is called the matthew paris map so it dates to 1250 and you can quite clearly see the shape of the north coast of scotland right in the middle sterling bridge below that the antonine wall and hadrian's wall built by the romans in the first and second centuries and then to the left is wales and then the rest of the map is made up of england so it shows the importance and the accuracy of this map from the 13th century that the english placed the importance of sterling bridge if you controlled sterling castle then you controlled sterling bridge and therefore controlled access to the north of scotland so it became a critical stronghold if you wanted to control scotland control the castle control the bridge and for that reason it was fought over time and time again during the scottish wars of independence now within the castle you have this little historical timeline it takes you from the first king of scotland kenneth mccalpin all the way from 843 ad through multiple scottish and even english monarchs like edward the first here and all of the important incidents and historical facts about sterling castle you've got for example robert the bruce 1314 the battle of bannockburn the decisive defeat of edward the first of sorry edward the second of england which was just a few miles away from sterling castle and it actually all came about as a result of the english trying to keep their control of sterling castle then you've also got this fantastic model that shows you the layout of the castle it shows you just how vast it is all of the multiple defences and then on three sides really steep cliffs so really the only soft or easy side to attack the from was from the main entrance you've also got the the galley that was used during the famous banquet at the great hall where the seafood course was served by mermaids and mermen and brass cannons fired confetti over guests that had come to the baptism of prince henry and you've also got this as well which shows you how the gatehouse the forework gatehouse built by james the fourth looked when it was originally built at the very beginning of the 1500s compared with how it looks now and you can also see that lovely white exterior and then when things really start to go wrong for the house of stewart charles the first loses his head charles the second dies without an heir it passes to his brother james he is forced off the throne and eventually his grandson bonnie prince charlie leads the final jacobite rebellion let's get us into the castle proper via this incredible forework gatehouse this was built by king james the fourth between 1501 and 1506 and the first thing that you see when you walk through is that beautiful great hall and then the side of the royal palaces adorned with all these statues but it's the great hall which really captivates with its royal gold exterior render this is the greatest building ever built in scotland a massive banqueting hall and even its colour shows the importance of the house of stewart of the power and the wealth of the scottish royal family and we'll go in there for a little look in a minute but before we make it there let's go into the heart of the castle the inner close off the square are the four most important buildings straight ahead of us is the king's building built for james the fourth around 1496 to the right of it is the chapel royale commissioned by james the sixth in 1594 and then we have the beautiful golden royal great hall added by james the fourth in 1503 and then lastly an alternative view of the royal palaces built by james the fifth around 1540 and he even added himself to the side of the building with his lovely big beard before we make our way into the great hall you will see some little cobbled lines on the ground here and these show the wall foundations of an original catholic chapel that was here before the chapel royale and it's on this very spot that a nine-month-old mary queen of scots was proclaimed queen of scotland now she'd actually become queen when her father died and she was just six days old but it was here on the 9th of september 1543 that the ceremony took place and now into the great hall and this really lives up to its name because it is spectacular the biggest great hall ever constructed in scotland arguably the greatest building ever constructed in scotland and look at that ceiling this is a hammer beam oak ceiling it's made entirely of wood and held together with wooden pins and dowels and if you think this is impressive in this day and age think what people must have thought when they walked in here in the 1500s incredible now the biggest party ever thrown in here was the baptism of henry prince henry he was the son of james the sixth of scotland and they served the fish course from a scale galleon ship which had brass cannons which fired over the 500 guests and the waiters and waitresses were dressed as mermaids and mermen dignitaries from all the major european households from all around the known world and at the head of the room the royal family on the dais or the high table then you've got these stunning windows these are actually relatively modern they're called the flodden windows and they represent scotland's disastrous defeat at the battle of flodden in 1513 and what of prince henry well when james the sixth got the england job in 1603 henry went off with him and on a hot day in london he made the fatal decision to go for a swim in the river thames and he got typhoid and died shortly after at the age of 18 no matter how many times i see the great hall it never fails to take my breath away all right back out into the inner close royal palace king's building straight ahead again it's still pretty quiet which is tremendous for showing you all round but let's go and have a look in the chapel royale so it's believed that there's been a church on this site as long as there's been a castle but this is one of the more recent buildings believed to have been opened in 1594 and it was also commissioned for the christening of poor old prince henry and the son of james the sixth he was christened here on the 30th of august 1594 so why such a flair such a show for the birth of prince henry well the reason was is that james the sixth who was king of scotland was descended from the house of tudor because his great grandmother was margaret tudor who was the brother of king henry the eighth of england and on the throne of england at the time was elizabeth the first and elizabeth the first had failed to produce an heir so the likelihood is that james the sixth or his successor was probably going to inherit the throne of england so this was a celebration of james and his ability to do what elizabeth couldn't which is produce an heir now with the sunlight streaming in you can see this spectacular painted decoration which is actually original from 1633 it was painted and decorated by the artist of valentine jenkins in preparation for a visit to sterling castle of charles the first and it's absolutely beautiful this is us back in the outer close you'll see the great hall again and the north range of the royal palace which we are going to head into or at least underneath this is going to take us into what would have been the workshops of the royal palace you see these big hooks on the wall these are about eight meters long 24 feet these are fire hooks so these would have been these would have been there to pull down the thatched roof of buildings in the event that the roof caught fire and in actual fact on one occasion mary queen of scots was almost killed when a fire broke out in the royal palaces thankfully though she survived but her maid didn't and it's said that she still haunts these corridors when we emerge from all of these workshops it's going to take us out on the west side of the royal palace where you have more cannons and you have what's called the ladies lookout now back in the medieval period they used to hold jousting tournaments hand-to-hand combat chivalry was incredibly important and up here was the best seat in the house because directly below us is where the jousting would take place so the scottish royal family could come out from the royal palaces and watch the tournaments directly below them now there's a great story that relates to a man he was italian his name was giovanni damiano de fallucci but us in scotland we just called him john damien giovanni john and he was an alchemist he was paid a small fortune by king james the fourth of scotland in his attempts to create gold in the workshops of sterling castle and also holyrood palace but on one occasion here in 1507 he donned a suit made from feathers and he jumped from the wall earning himself the nickname the bird man of sterling castle not alcatraz unfortunately for john damien he plummeted like a stone and he broke his thigh in the process but he did survive amazingly now over the best part of a decade he milked the king for a small fortune and eventually disappeared around about 1514 having created the square root of not a lot but the king was killed at the battle of flodden in 1513 and he probably thought it was a good time to leave but it is a tremendous story and look more spectacular views now this little courtyard within the royal palace has got an interesting story it's called the lion's den and apparently it's where king james the fifth used to keep his pet lion he was given one as a gift from flanders in 1537 and in actual fact multiple scottish monarchs including james ii and james vi had pet lions they were considered to be noble animals and were often given as gifts between the different royal so this is us coming into the royal palace which is split perfectly down the middle a king's half and a queen's half and this is the queen's half built for mary de guise in the late 1530s into the 1540s the royal palaces are composed of three rooms three for the king and three for the queen this is the first of the three for the queen and you can see the coats of arms of our husband on the left and her mary de guise on the right the eagle the symbol of france so this is her outer hall this is the first room that visitors would have arrived in and it was also fairly simply decorated no soft furnishings no tapestries it was somewhere that you didn't have a lot of privacy if you came to talk to the queen but if you were important then you would make it into the inner hall the inner hall was lavishly decorated and within it you'll find the unicorn tapestries now these tapestries are not originals but they are based on a tapestry which now is found in the met in new york they are flemish tapestries and we know from written records that there was a set of tapestries here at sterling castle which were based around the hunting of the unicorn these were recreated in the 1990s over a period of around about 14 years and a cost of millions of pounds and they give you an indication of how lavish the palaces here at sterling castle would have been and the unicorn is of course scotland's national animal a symbol of purity power and untameable spirit now if the king or queen really wanted to impress you then they would invite you for a one-to-one in the bed chamber not quite how it sounds this was their most sacred place it was also their most vulnerable place and by inviting you in here they were trying to win your favour and say that they really trusted you but it was actually all fake because they didn't really sleep here they just wanted to give you the impression that they trusted you implicitly king james the fifth of scotland died prematurely in 1542 leaving behind his 60 old daughter mary queen of scots and as a result his section of the palace was never fully completed before he died in 1542 he did commission these oak medallions which are called the sterling heads which adorn his inner hall these are in fact replicas but the originals are in the room directly above minus their paint which unfortunately the victorians removed your ticket for sterling castle also gets you into the king's old buildings where you'll find the argyll and sutherland highlanders regimental museum now the regiment was created in 1881 by the amalgamation of the 91st argyllshire highlanders and the 93rd sutherland highlanders but their history goes all the way back to 1639 during the 19th century the 91st and the 93rd fought in the napoleonic wars the war of 1812 against the united states numerous colonial conflicts and the crimean war where the 93rd became world famous for their actions at the battle of where they became known as the thin red line against a russian cavalry charge upstairs you'll find the colours room which has all of the regimental flags and pennants but the start of the show is the famous painting by robert gibb which was commissioned in 1881 and it shows the 93rd regiment of foot at the battle of balaclava on the 25th of october 1854 against the famous russian cavalry charge and the thin red line there's also lots of artwork that shows the regiments through all the various conflicts from the world wars all the way through until iraq and afghanistan a lot of people don't realize but the late queen elizabeth ii also has a deep association with the argyll and sutherland highlanders because she has been their colonel in chief since 1947 and when the museum was renovated and reopened in 2021 just before her death she visited the museum and opened it to the public now the regiment was further amalgamated in 2020 12 and it became part of the 5th battalion the royal regiment of scotland where it performs ceremonial duties as well as operational duties through this little archway off of the inner close is another of stirling castle's fantastic stories it takes you through to an area known as the douglas gardens it was here on the 22nd of february 1452 that james ii of scotland was responsible for the murder of the eighth earl of douglas he invited him here for dinner and then when he least expected it he stabbed him to death and apparently threw him out through this small window into the courtyard below which forevermore became known as the douglas gardens another sinister scottish story who'd have thought it over here in the corner of the douglas gardens is a wee building which looks a bit out of sorts but this is the old powder magazine so when the armed forces were here in the 19th century this is where they would store barrels of gunpowder but on one occasion it caught fire and had it have completely ignited it would have likely destroyed much of the castle in the explosion so they came up with a bright idea of let's build the gunpowder store a wee bit further away from the castle so down below the castle along this wall walk in a minute you'll see what's called the nether bailey which is the lower courtyard below the castle and that's where they built a purpose-built gunpowder store but seeing as the army haven't been here since 1964 there are no more explosives on site that big building is the museum that we were in earlier for the argyll and sutherland highlanders and it also served as a hospital and also as the officer's mess when this was a military barracks there used to be about three to four hundred soldiers based permanently here at sterling castle down below is the the suburb of sterling known as raploch and then again down towards the king's park the old royal hunting ground the king and queen's knot and the victorian section of of sterling stretching out in the distance it's not a massive city by any means i think there's only about 40 000 people live in sterling carrying on along the walls this is us starting to come over towards the northern side of the castle now so you'll see a few mountains and such like in the distance there's another cemetery just on the horizon below the castle which is the balangay cemetery beyond it is gowan hill and away in the distance is the oakal hills and just in front of them you can see the national wallace monument a monument to sir william wallace completed in 1869 and well worth a visit carrying on along the northern wall directly down below us in a moment to the left hand side is the the lower bailey of the castle and that's where they built the new gunpowder stores again stunning views and there's a wall walk there that you can follow all the way around the lower part of the castle so that's the old building the old powder store and down below these big long buildings which have got a big high wall around them that is the new gunpowder store now it houses various different pop-up museums that tell you more about the history and the heritage of sterling sterling castle in the local area there's also a little museum about the sterling tapestries which we saw in the royal palaces which were reconstructed in the 1990s at a cost of millions of pounds the unicorn tapestry so you can go down there and learn more about the tapestry itself and this wall walk is eventually going to take us all the way around the castle and take us back to almost the gatehouse so you'll recognize the great hall there with that distinctive orangey yellow color starting to come into view and again more spectacular views out towards the wallace monument 246 steps to the top spiral staircase very narrow no elevator no lift so not for the faint-hearted or the claustrophobic and finally we find ourselves back at the outer close close to the great hall and the final part of the fortifications of the castle which are the grand battery so these were built around about 1689 in response to the glorious revolution and the threat of the jacobites however they didn't earn their keep until 1746 alongside the french spur which lies just off to the right hand side because bonnie prince charlie attempted to take the castle during the final jacobite rebellion of 1746 and he was repelled by cannon fire from here directly below the grand battery you'll find the new kitchens or the great kitchens now these were built at the very beginning of the 1500s when the great hall was built and amazingly they actually filled them in in 1689 to to build the grand battery cannons up on the top of but they were rediscovered in the 1920s and excavated and they give us a fantastic insight to how the kitchens would have looked back in the beginning of the 1500s these would have been an absolute hive of activity these hatches were for passing the meals out so that people could then run from here into the great hall to potentially feed hundreds of guests i think the biggest recorded gathering in the great hall was over 500 visitors but on top of that you would have had all the hangers on all the people associated with the nobility and the people who were attending two huge open fires in here this is where all the hot food would be cooked and prepared before being passed through into the next section and then lastly the oldest part of the castle this is the old north gateway which dates back to the 1380s so you imagine the people the horses that have passed through here on their way up into the castle interior it's quite incredible that it's even still standing after all this time and from here you could have an arrive through the main entrance you could come down into this area here which was the nether bailey the lower courtyard and this is probably where a lot of the animals would have been stabled where a lot of the provisions and the supplies would have been stored and then up ahead is the castle the great hall and the royal palaces well i hope you've enjoyed my little virtual tour of sterling castle there'll be many more to come and hopefully you also realise why i regard sterling castle as my favourite for taking visitors to the views are incredible the history is spectacular but most of all the stories and the architecture of those buildings it doesn't take much imagination to imagine an infant mary queen of scots running around the halls of the great palace those tremendous banquets that must have taken place in the great hall which without doubt is the most incredible building that we have in scotland so it's a delight to take visitors to and regardless of what the weather is the views from those ramparts are spectacular so as ever if you're not already subscribed to the channel then please hit the button and help support the channel's growth oh you can also give it a hype as well still not sure what that does but it would be much appreciated so i look forward to seeing you all on my next virtual tour and feel free in the comments to let me know where you would like to go next so i look forward to seeing you all on the next tour and until then take care and we'll see you all soon thanks for watching