Architecture Notes

Event ID 836514

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Architecture Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/836514

NS89NW 43 80923 95667

NMRS REFERENCE:

ARCHITECT: J T Rochead, 1859 - 1869.

SCULPTORS: A. Handyside Ritchie

J. Pittendreigh MacGillivray - bronze bust

competition designs by Peddie & Kinnear, c.1859

Situated on the prominence of Abbey Craig, this neo-medieval monument to William Wallace was designed by J T Rochead of Glasgow. Begun in 1862 and completed in 1869, it was modelled on the format of late-medieval crown steeples such as that of St Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh. Built of roughly faced coursed sandstone and set above a battered plinth, the tower is of four principal barrel-vaulted storeys and the access staircase, spiral above the first floor, is set at the NW corner. A single-storey caretaker's building is set to the S. The style of the building falls within the Scots Baronial ambit, but it represents considerable appropriation of Scottish architectural forms, including the crown steeple, corbelled turrets, cabled mouldings and fictive gunloops. The building houses a series of Scots worthies, and a bronze of Wallace, by D W Stevenson and Pittendreich MacGillivray. The Smith Art Gallery at Stirling holds a series of drawings of the building by J T Rochead.

This site was recorded for the LBRP 2002-03 to augment photographic coverage.

Information from RCAHMS (NMC) April 2003

JGD 'Building Chronicle' No. 28 July 1 1856.

EXTERNAL REFERENCE:

Architectural Services, Stirling District Council.

Perspective view hanging in office of principal.

Scottish Record Office

Ceremony of laying the foundation stone of the Wallace Monument.

Letter from James 4th Duke of Montrose to Charles Baillie.

He agrees that the sword of Sir John de Graeme may be exhibited on the occasion.

1861 GD 157/2611