Houses
Such of the old houses as survive are of remarkable interest and character. Most of them date from the sixteenth, seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. the period when the older Scottish domestic architecture reached its full development. The characteristics of that architecture are quite unmistakeable, and in few places are they to be seen to greater advantage than in Old Stirling.
Stevenson Ludging
The houses are always built of stone, sometimes in the form of dressed ashlar, like the Norie Mansion in Broad Street, more commonly of rubble, harled and limewashed, with exposed ashlar for the ornamental detail, an arrangement seen at its best in the Argyll Ludging. Gables are almost always crowstepped and chimneys are frankly emphasised in the Scottish manner. Most interesting is the skilful use of decorative features in the form of moulded doorways, carved panels, dormer pediments, or corbelled turrets, to introduce life and individuality into a design. The same instinct may be seen in a larger way in the planning of projections, whether in the form of the square wing or jamb as in the Stevenson or Erskine Ludgings, or the rounded turnpike so admirably employed in the Auchenbowie or Darrow Ludgings.
Darrow Ludging
These houses are an integral part of Old Stirling. They are not merely the indispensable setting of its larger buildings, without which these would appear awkward and even unimpressive. They are fully as much — and in their own right — features of the historic personality of the burgh. In Broad Street, for example. the superb effect of ancient dignity that it achieves — the most impressive thing of its kind in Scotland — is built up by a multiplicity of details, by the Tolbooth and Mar’s Wark, certainly, but even more by the frontages of the old houses rising in serene array on its northern side.
If Stirling is to maintain the character — to which it owes its fame — of an ancient and historic burgh, the preservation of its older domestic buildings is of supreme and compelling importance. Without them it would become a very ordinary town, set on an extraordinary site admittedly, and containing a few remarkable buildings, but in all other respects affording but a meagre indication to its citizens and visitors of its historic stature.
STIRLING is
situated much like Edinburgh, with its Castle on an Eminence to the
West, and the Town running down the Descent of the Hill to the
East. The Market-Place is spacious, with a handsome Town-House in it :
And from the Earl of Mar's House to the Bottom of the Town may be about
half and English Mile, all upon a Descent, with good Houses.
John Macky, 1723