My Newest Favourite Thing: Stirling Castle

It's not strictly true to say that Stirling Castle is a newest favourite thing because I went there about four years ago, but I liked it very much and, although I have posted about the monarchs who lived there, and the Dos and Don'ts of Kingship, I have not yet posted about the castle itself, so here we are. 

Perched atop a cliff, it is an imposing structure along the lines of Edinburgh Castle. It dominates the landscape above the river Forth at the meeting point between Lowlands and Highlands, and the tourism info claims it was the key to the kingdom of Scotland. During the Wars of Independence, which were civil wars among the Scots as well as a struggle between Scotland and England, the castle changed hands eight times in 50 years. It was the focal point for famous battles such as Stirling Bridge (featuring William Wallace) and Bannockburn (starring Robert the Bruce), in which Robert captured the castle back from the English but destroyed its defences to stop it being used by the English in future. 

Robert the Bruce is a complicated character who seems to have been on and off the English side until neither Edward I (reigning monarch in England) or the Scots really trusted him. What he really wanted was the crown of Scotland, to which his family held a claim along with several other powerful families. He stabbed the heir of one of those to death, became King of Scotland and had bloody civil wars with the family of the deceased claimant. Whatever his credentials, he is clearly admired enough to have a statue of him built just outside the castle.

There are commanding views from the battlements, as you might expect, and also some interesting archaeology. Intriguingly enough, research carried out in 2011 revealed that King Arthur's round table may well have been hidden beneath the historic King's Knot that sits below the castle. 

The King's Knot

The King's Knot, best appreciated from the Ladies' Lookout in Stirling Castle, is on the grounds of the ancient King's Park, Crown property from at least the 1100s, where Scotland's royalty partook in jousting, hawking and hunting. The earthworks known as the King's and Queen's Knots were part of the formal gardens of Stirling Castle, and were remodelled for Charles I's 'hamecoming' for his Scottish coronation, which took place in 1663.

You can also see the amazing burial grounds, such as the Old Town Cemetery which spreads over the valley between the castle and the Church of the Holy Rude. A burial ground has occupied the site west of the Holy Rude Church since 1129, when the first Dominican Chapel was built here. For most of Stirling's history, those who could afford memorials were laid to rest beneath the church floor, a practice which ceased in 1623 officially 'to avoid the great abuse and profanation of God, his house, in burying of dead corpses', but actually because the stench within the kirk had become unbearable.

Many of the graves are marked only with initials and symbols; names are rare as such identification would be a sign of sinful vanity. Who you were didn't matter, whereas what you were, did - thus stones bear the marks of a hammer, mallet and chisel (Masons and Quarriers), skulls, crossed-bones and hourglasses (Death), an Angel, Green Man or Ouroboros (Resurrection) or symbols of trade or business (Occupation).

In November 1823, 'Resurrection Men', graverobbers seeking corpses for medical study, visited the cemetery probably surmising that as it was terribly overcrowded, a few bodies wouldn't be missed. In the 1840s, the new Valley Cemetery was landscaped 'as an ornamental cemetery according to the most approved manner of a modern necropolis' by evangelist William Drummond. Its straight lines and regimented rows were inspired by scripture: 'the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.' (Isaiah 40:4).

That's quite a lot about the surrounds, now for the castle itself. After entering through the main gate, the Queen Anne Gardens are through the next archway. This peaceful and pretty garden is on the 'sunny south side' (remembering this is Scotland) of the castle, overlooked by the Queen's Lodgings and the Prince's Tower. There may have been a royal garden here since the 1400s; the flat lawn was turned into a bowling green in the 1620s, and the beech tree is over 200 years old. 

The castle has been both a great royal residence and a powerful stronghold. Following the attempted Jacobite invasion of 1807, improvements to the castle's defences were ordered as a matter of priority.  The main front wall was extended outwards to form Guardhouse Square. This had the effect of creating two defensive walls, both of which were fronted by ditches defended by covered firing galleries known as caponiers. To the rear of the walls, chambers called casemates were built to strengthen the wall and provide gun emplacements. The French Spur was modified slightly to allow more canons to be mounted. 

The main parts of the castle are arranged around the quadrangular Inner Close: the Royal Palace; the King's Old Building; the Chapel Royal; and the Great Hall. 

In times of peace, Scottish royalty came to Stirling to enjoy its comforts, the superb hunting and to hold court - the castle was often the centre of government. Royal building projects like the Great Hall, the Chapel Royal and the Palace of James V marked it out as one of the most important places in all Scotland. It was also a childhood home of some of the most famous people in Scottish and British history, such as Mary Queen of Scots and James VI and I. 

The Royal Palace is one of the best-preserved Renaissance buildings in the UK and has been refurbished to look as it might have done around the 1540s. Simply decorated and furnished, it recalls the years when it was the childhood home of Mary Queen of Scots.  The royal chambers include the magnificent rooms where nobles and courtiers met their monarch, and the bedrooms where the royals retired with their closest companions. They are also home to brightly-painted replicas of the Stirling Heads and the Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries. 

The architecture is French-inspired, but the decoration is German in inspiration, and sources for the statues have been found in the work of the German engraver Hans Burgkmair. The statues include a line of soldiers on the south parapet, and a series of full-size figures around the principal floor. These principal figures include a portrait of James V, the Devil, St Michael, and representations of Venus and several planetary deities. Their arrangement on the north, east and south faces of the Palace has been interpreted in relation to the quarters of the heavens. 

Internally, the Palace comprises two apartments, one each for the king and queen. Each has a hall, presence chamber, and bedchamber, with various small rooms known as closets. The Renaissance decoration continued inside, although little has survived the building's military use, excepting the carved stone fireplaces. 

In the King's Outer Chamber

The Great Hall is the largest of its kind ever built in Scotland and was used for feasts, dances and pageants. The exterior walls are a distinctive colour, rendered in Royal Gold Harling, as they would have been in the 1500s.

Completed for James IV in 1503, the Great Hall has four pairs of tall windows at the dais end, where the king and queen sat, and was heated by five large fireplaces. There are galleries for minstrels and trumpeters. In 1594 James IV held a banquet in the hall for the baptism of his son, Prince Henry. It was so lavish that the fish course was served from an enormous model wooden ship complete with firing canons and featuring live mermaids. These extravagant celebrations are thought to be the origin of the term 'pushing the boat out'.

Stained glass window in the Great Hall

The King's Old Building is the oldest part of the Inner Close. It was begun as a new residential range by James IV and originally comprised an L-shaped building. The principal rooms were on the first floor, over cellars, and included two chambers with wide open views to the west.

The Chapel Royal was built in just seven months on the orders of James VI who wanted somewhere suitable for the baptism of his son and heir Prince Henry. Dating from 1593-4, it was one of the first Protestant kirks in Scotland and also the last royal building at the castle. In 1603 the union of the crowns saw James head south to rule from England, and in 1625 he was succeeded by his surviving younger son, Charles I. The handsome frieze painted by Valentine Jenkin in 1628 was created in the expectation of a coronation visit to Scotland of the new king. 

The stunning white, blue, red and gold altar cloths were embroidered by members of the Stirling Branch of the Embroiderers Guild. Designed by textile artists Malcolm Lochhead, they take inspiration from the waves and seascapes of the chapel's upper walls. Upon completion, the cloths were dedicated to the children and teacher who lost their lives in Dunblane Primary School in 1996. Today they are used in interdenominational worship. 

Stirling Castle later became an important military base and eventually home to the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. Some of the vaults display barrels, which once contained gunpowder. Others showcase exhibitions from the romanticisation of Scotland (encouraged largely by Sir Walter Scott) and the identity of Highlanders, to the engineering feats of Robert Stevenson and the photography of Erskine Beveridge.

Stirling Castle is a truly fascinating place and well worth a visit. Would recommend.

God Help Us: Winter

Winter by Ali Smith

Penguin

Pp. 322

Ali Smith’s seasonal quartet began with Autumn, published last year, and continues here with Winter. The subject is quite different but many of the themes are familiar. It is written in a continuous fluid style, but with short sentences and without irksome stream-of-consciousness. The novel embroiders snatches of literature and legend into a rich tapestry: a retelling of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol for our times. Dickens opened his festive novel with the words, “Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that.” Smith riffs on this idea. “God was dead: to begin with. And romance was dead. Chivalry was dead. Poetry, the novel, painting, they were all dead, and art was dead. Theatre and cinema were both dead. Literature was dead. The book was dead.”

So, what’s left? An ageing woman called Sophia imagines a child’s floating head to keep her company. She is visited by her son, Arthur (Art for short), who writes a blog called Art in Nature, which his ex-girlfriend, Charlotte, hates because it isn’t political. He explains, “What I do is, by its nature, not political. Politics is transitory. I watch the progress of the year in the fields, I look closely at the structures of hedgerows. Hedgerows are, well, they’re hedgerows. They just aren’t political.” Not wanting to admit he is alone, Art pays Lux, a girl he spotted in a bus-stop, to accompany him and pretend to be his girlfriend. When Sophia appears to be very ill, Lux contacts her estranged sister, Iris, to whom she no longer speaks. Iris turns up on the doorstep and recriminations and family resentments rise to the surface. The names with their connotations of sleeping heroes, guiding light and Greek gods are all pertinent.

The treatment of nature is centre stage – if Autumn was about Brexit; then Winter is about the environment, and the disasters destroying the planet and humanity. Iris is politically motivated, and the sisters dredge up memories of the Greenham Common protests, about which Smith seems almost nostalgic. She suggests that individuals can still make a different if they work together, as topics range from the Grenfell Tower to the insistence on stopping migrants; the political becomes personal and vice versa. The novel contains CND songs, and 1960-style rhymes about poisonous gasses and noxious chemicals. Horrifyingly, people are crowdfunding to raise money to stop rescue boats from helping refugees.

Having been impressed by Cymbeline, Lux originally came to England because it is the land of Shakespeare. In an obvious political metaphor, she says, “If this writer from this place can make this mad and bitter mess into this graceful thing it is at the end, where the balance comes back and all the lies are revealed and all the losses are compensated… then that’s the place I’m going. I’ll go there, I’ll live there.”

Language and communication are themselves under threat in this modern world. To glean information, people no longer talk to each other; they google things and the results are listed. Just as there is a disembodied floating head in Sophia’s imagination, words are split in half to create new meanings: get ahead; get a head; “I’m nobody’s child. I’m no body’s child.” Art examines the concept of snow and the connotations of the word ‘snowflake’. In one section, Art asks Lux a series of questions, and then we see her side of the dialogue separately as she answers them. Further indications that cohesive dialogue is breaking down is seen in parliament when a man barks like a dog at a woman who is trying to make a speech.

This is a novel of stories and interpretations. We are given tales of fertility; the Green Man, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and defenders of past rituals and natural bounty. Smith combines the richness of the past with the frustrations of the present and a glimmer of hope for the future, believing that communities and compassion can overcome division and isolation. Winter is an incredible achievement – it was written to reflect the immediacy of the time (even the text is not justified, implying a sense of urgency), yet it feels fresh rather than hurried. It ends with another echo from A Christmas Carol: “In the middle of summer it’s winter. White Christmas. God help us, every one. Art in nature.” It’s enough to make the reader want to take to the streets.

'Above all things, avoid vagueness'

William Morris: A Life for our Time by Fiona MacCarthy

(Faber & Faber), Pp. 800

This is a massive book, because Morris was a great man. He has done so many things with his life, being a poet and novelist; print maker; designer; weaver; Socialist; reformer; speaker, and described as ‘the greatest artist-craftsman of his period’. Fiona MacCarthy has a huge job on her hands to capture the vibrancy and energy of the man on paper, and she does it well and thoroughly, as this is researched from letters, diaries and memoirs of Morris himself and those who knew him. Educated at Oxford and destined for the cloth, Morris gave up the priesthood (and, later, architecture) to make and produce things. “To Morris the idea of work became equated with creative vigour and directness: a mental and manual effort resulted in the actual production of a carpet, a story, a translation of The Iliad.”

The Oxford intelligentsia at the time was obsessed with poetry (Tennyson in particular) and the Arthurian cult. Morris and his great companion, Edward Burne-Jones laid their own claims on the Arthurian myth, with Morris writing verses and Burne-Jones dwelling on themes of the San Graal in his paintings and tapestries throughout his life. “Arthurianism, as Burne-Jones and Morris saw it, was not merely an intellectual exercise. They fell upon it as an extension of religion, adopting the chivalric as a rule of life.” Morris loved the idea of a fraternity and felt the importance of the brotherhood; a group of men with chivalric codes. “If Morris had a need for the intimate companion he had an even stronger yearning for the group.”

King Arthur and Sir Lancelot, stained glass panel designed by William Morris 

One of the celebrated members of this group was Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who later went on to have an affair with Morris’s wife, Jane (née Burden). MacCarthy doesn’t shy away from the affair, but neither does she dwell upon it in any length. Indeed, the relationship between Jane Morris (or Janey as she was known) and Rossetti seems slightly sordid and not even very interesting; in their correspondence they are “intertwined in illness, in solicitous inquiry, exchanging news of treatments: theirs was hypochondriac passion, taken to extremes.” Janey was a constant invalid, as Victorian women often seem to have been. Morris, although clearly uncomfortable with the arrangement, never sued for divorce which suggests sensitivity to Janey and their children rather than any wilful ignorance.

“It was while he was at Oxford that Morris’s wild temper began to take on the quality of legend. In these rages he was accredited with superhuman strength.” He used to head-butt walls, bite through window frames, lift up heavy weights in his teeth and beat himself about the head in fits of masochism. He became the butt of jokes; the comic character; the basis of a legend. He was mocked for his size and appearance, his rages, and his wild hair and beard – the rest of the group nicknamed him Topsy. Burne-Jones and Rossetti drew caricatures of him, which are partly affectionate, but they are also a little cruel. Morris payed along with the joke, “But it would be difficult for somebody as sensitive as Morris to withstand unscathed such a long barrage of ridicule. It must to some extent have damaged his self-confidence, especially with women, and intensified his feeling that he was the outcast, even in his own close group.”

The M's at Ems by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Although he is now remembered more for his manual creativity, he was a prolific novelist and poet. He wrote The Earthly Paradise as his homage to Chaucer and the English tradition of ceremonial story-telling. This is the “vast narrative that was to make him, for a decade, the most popular poet of his period and eventually put him in the running for Poet Laureate in succession to Tennyson.” The women in Morris’s novels are strong characters who are guided by their own sense of value and self-determination. He writes of utopian themes where people live together without false hierarchies and are fully committed to the work they do. He enjoyed the minutiae of life and believed more care should be taken over individual duties.

Perhaps his most influential stamp upon the world, however, was his approach to craftsmanship, visible in his designs for everything from tapestries and textiles to wallpaper and bookplates. The earliest of his wallpaper designs are of fruits and flowers with a fluid sense of movement. “They are gentle flowing patterns which show Morris’s belief in the purpose of pattern to impose a rhythm, to soothe and civilize.” Designs such as ‘Rose and Thistle’, ‘Bird and Anemone’, and ‘Brother Rabbit’ are complex, finely detailed and confident designs. They are “very English in their range of reference, their observation of the life of the hedgerows, their fondness for the sleek, evasive creatures of the woodlands, but also clearly influenced by Morris’s study of historical textiles.”

Brother Rabbit design by William Morris

Morris’s attitude to manufacture and design is what really sets him apart from his fellow craftsmen. He famously said, “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful” and this was an adage he brought to his work and artefacts. Steadfastly against art only for the few, Morris maintained that all could be taught the ethics and the practice. In his first public speech, The Decorative Arts: Their Relation to Modern Life and Progress (1877) he proclaimed, “I do not want art for a few, any more than education for a few or freedom for a few.”

He visited Iceland on a number of occasions and kept detailed diaries, which MacCarthy mines for clues as to his future Socialism. She believes the trips had a profound effect on his art and politics, and he declared, “That the most grinding poverty is a trifling evil compared with the inequality of classes.” It seems inevitable that Morris should have been drawn into politics, and he embraced Socialism and toured the country speaking at rallies and promoting the cause. He revelled in being given a task and an active purpose. He kept a diary of his findings and experiences, and never became hardened or inured to the inequality, appreciating that it was his only good luck which made him born prosperous. Reminiscent of George Orwell, “He travels around England with such great reserves of stamina, watchful and concerned, but never sentimental, recording the depressing details of the scene.”

William Morris (right) with Edward Burne-Jones

William Morris was not optimistic about the future of culture which he felt was being destroyed by rampant consumerism and global greed. He wanted to “transform the world with beauty” and felt that if he succeeded in “some small way, in only one small corner of the world” he would count himself blessed. His enduring influence must be taken as a measure of his success, but as he said himself, “the work goes on”. It does, indeed.