Publication Account
Date 1985
Event ID 1016550
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1016550
The Old Bridge at Stirling is the best preserved of the two surviving late medieval bridges in the former county of Stirling (the other being at Bannockburn, NS 807904). Until comparatively recent times, Stirling was the lowest bridging point on the Forth, and the town owed much of its importance in medieval times to the strategic value of this position. Like the houses of the earlier medieval town, the first bridges across the Forth were of wood (despite the misleading representation of a stone bridge on the burgh seal of 1296), and in 1905 the foundations of a wooden bridge were found in the river bed about 60 m upstream of the Old Bridge.
The present bridge, probably the first to be built of stone, dates from the late 15th century or early 16th century. It spans the river with four semicircular arches supported on piers with triangular cut-waters. On the sides of the carriageway there are refuges for pedestrians which, until the 18th century, were roofed. Originally the ends of the bridge were provided with archways, and the one on the north side of the river had an iron gate, but they were removed in the 18th century and replaced by small square pillars.
In 1745 one of the arches was cut on the orders of General Blakeney in order to prevent the Jacobite army from entering the town, but the damage was soon repaired and the bridge continued in use until 1831, when a new bridge was built about 100m downstream.
Information from ‘Exploring Scotland’s Heritage: The Clyde Estuary and Central Region’, (1985).
