The landscape in and around Stirling is of iconic beauty and significance. From the earliest times it has influenced and shaped the thoughts of those who live here. On a daily basis, it colours and influences the attitudes and perceptions of local people, most of whom are aware of the good fortune they have to live within a place of such scenic beauty, imbued with historical importance. Significant numbers have added to the experience through painting and sketching the landscape, or through writing about it.
The Theatre of Stirling.
The majestic landscape was created by the retreating glaciers of the last ice age. There are three crag and tail formations – that on which Stirling Castle and City is built, the Abbey Craig on which the National Wallace Monument is sited, and Craigforth.
Craigforth.
Craigforth is the heart of the old Craigforth estate where the Prudential Insurance Company is currently housed. The River Forth, like the River Meander of Phyrgia, winds alongside all three, and is one of the world’s great waterways.
Stirling is a place of strategic importance, a crossing place between north and south, the only bridgeable point in mediaeval times over what was perceived to be ‘the sea of Scotland’ (Scocia ultra marina on Matthew Paris’s map of c.1250).
Although centuries of cultivation transformed the marshland, Stirling remained of strategic significance until the withdrawal of the Army from the Castle in 1964. The maxim ‘to take Stirling is to hold Scotland’ underscores that significance. Alexander Smith (1829-1867) in his novel A Summer in Skye used the more picturesque metaphor: “Stirling, like a huge brooch, clasps Highlands and Lowlands together”.
On account of Stirling’s strategic position, travellers and visitors came of necessity. A keen appreciation of the aesthetic beauty of the landscape led to the construction of viewpoints throughout the city, at different points in time, including the following:
1. Tower of the Abbey of Cambuskenneth, 1300.
2. Tower of the Church of the Holy Rude, 1470.
3. Tolbooth Tower, 1704.
4. The Back Walk, 1723.
5. Atheneum Tower, 1816.
6. Ladies’ Rock viewpoint, Valley Cemetery, 1859.
7. National Wallace Monument, 1869.
8. High School of Stirling Observatory Tower, 1888.
9. Beheading Stone viewpoint, Gowan Hill, 1888.
10. Viewing tower of the Old Town Jail, 1994.
11. Viewing platform, Stirling Tolbooth, 2001.
Few places have had such a prolonged, documented appreciation of the landscape in a 700 year period.
Stirling in Literature
From the earliest times, and in Latin poetry, the landscape of Stirling has been celebrated by writers. Sir David Lindsay, writing in about 1540, expressed his love of Stirling (or Snowdon, as the poets commonly called it) through the mouth of the King’s dying pet parrot.
In his Testament of the Papyngo: Patrick Hume of Polwarth wrote of the glories of the Gowanhill and the abundant flowers of the King’s Park to entertain the thirteen year old King James VI in June 1579.
Arthur Johnston (1579-1641) praised Stirling in elegant Classical Latin.
The most sustained poem on the River Forth itself is by Hector MacNeill. His 38 verse poem The Links of Forth, or a Parting Peep at the Carse of Stirling was written in 1796 to express his sadness on his departure for the West Indies and is a fine study in the relationship of landscape to national identity.
The Links of Forth have always been one of the great sights of Scotland. If the Forth was our Meander, it is also our Rubicon, and even a Helicon for poetic inspiration.
When Robert Burns visited Stirling, he wrote to his friend Robert Muir (26 August 1787) that:
“I said a fervent prayer for Old Caledonia over the hole of a blue whinstone where Robert de Bruce fixed his royal standard on the banks of Bannockburn; and just now, from Stirling Castle, I have seen by the setting sun the glorious prospect of the windings of the Forth through the rich Carse of Stirling”.
Generation after generation of poets and writers have celebrated this landscape in words. The very outline of the hills, travelling up the M9 from Stirling to Keir forms the shape of the map which Robert Louis Stevenson created for his novel Treasure Island, for this is his “Scenery of Dreams”, the landscape where the Stevenson family spent their holidays.
The landscape has also inspired patriotism and political action. On 23 June 1928, the novelist, poet and politician, Robert Bontine Cunningham Graham said:
“Look around these historic surroundings. Under the Wallace Crag our national hero led his men against Cressingham. Within three miles, Bruce broke the chivalry of England at Bannockburn. Burns has wandered in those hills. In Stirling Castle our historic parliaments stayed for centuries, alternating with Edinburgh and Linlithgow.
The eternal hills still look down on us as they looked down on Wallace and Bruce. The same snell wind coming up from the Western Isles still breathes on us today. The same sun pours its rays on us. The same mist fills the corries of the hills. The same spates fill our rivers. And I would fain, my friends, hope that the same spirit fills the heart of every Scotsman.”
In her autobiography, Wendy Wood wrote “From the top of the tower of the Wallace Monument, looking across the fertile fields to the high peaks, to the life-giving Forth, to Stirling Castle rising in sudden pride from the plain where Bannockburn was fought, roused a determination in me which neither poverty, mockery nor setbacks have ever been able to extinguish in fifty-five years”.
Stirling and Art
The first landscape paintings of the area were done by Dutch artists in the seventeenth century. As the art of landscape painting developed in the eighteenth century, every artist of note came to paint in Stirling.
The English artist Joseph Farington (1747-1821) thought that Stirling had few rivals for beauty, and he was given the Freedom of the Burgh in 1788 for his artistic work.
Visiting painters included Alexander Nasmyth, Thomas Hofland, Thomas Fenwick, Horatio MacCulloch, Thomas Hearne, Edward Dayes, Francis Nicholson, Henry Brocas, Hohn Varley, Copley Fielding, John Glover, Samuel Prout, J.D. Harding, George Fennel Robertson and William Turner.
In the period 1890-1920, many of the so called Glasgow Boys (William Kennedy, James Guthrie, Crawford Shaw, George Henry and A.E. Hornel) spent their summers in Stirling and Cambuskenneth.
Joseph Denovan Adam (1842-1896) set up Scotland’s only school of animal art, at Craigmill, where he kept a fold of highland cattle and other animals for his students to paint.
William York MacGregor, “the Father of the Glasgow School”, lived at Bridge of Allan and is buried in Logie Kirkyard.
The artists’ colonies were an attraction for other artists too, but the main reason to come to the Stirling area was the iconic landscape.
The great master of American landscape, George Innes (1825-1894) came to Bridge of Allan and witnessed the finest sunset he had ever seen, before dying unexpectedly on the same night.
Stirling Castle remained an iconic attraction. In 1934, W.D. and H.O. Wills of Bristol sent their artist Archie White to draw Stirling Castle as part of Imperial Tobacco’s promotion of the popular “Three Castles” brand of cigarettes, whilst poster images created by Sir D.Y. Cameron and Maurice Greiffenhagen were used to promote Stirling as a railway destination.
My thanks to Elspeth King, Director of the Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum for historical and artistic facts.
Congratulations to Corronach on First to Find.
Spoiler Pic - Arthur John Cowper.
