Tour Scotland travel video of Gargoyles, with Scottish music, on visit to the castle in Stirling. The Palace of Stirling Castle was built by King James V in the middle of the sixteenth century. The King had just returned from France and wanted new accommodation to rival what he had seen on the Continent. He wanted an ornate façade with tall grilled windows and grotesque carved figures. These Renaissance sculptures were probably carved by a Frenchman, and would have been an attempt by King James V to replicate the type of work that he has seen at Loches and Blois in France. Today the Palace is considered one of the finest Renaissance buildings in Scotland, and the sculptures are among the best examples of French stone carving in the country.
In architecture, and specifically in Gothic architecture, a gargoyle, is a carved or formed grotesque figure, with a spout designed to convey water from a roof and away from the side of a building, thereby preventing rainwater from running down masonry walls and eroding the mortar between. Architects often used multiple gargoyles on a building to divide the flow of rainwater off the roof to minimize the potential damage from a rainstorm.
All photographs are copyright of Sandy Stevenson, Tour Scotland, and may not be used without permission.
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