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A set of web pages describing Stirling's unique location and how this has played an important role in Scotland's turbulent past is covered within this website. Other Stirling images are included in the Scottish rivers section.

Links to other information associated with these images

Upper Forth Valley

A view taken from the bottom of Stirling castle looking west towards Ben Lomond and the Highland boundary fault.

This area upstream of Stirling was, for many centuries, known as Flanders Moss, a wide stretch of marshland prone to flooding and with few crossing points.

Click on this button for 3 more pages of information about the castle, its history and its location taken from a much larger website of almost 600 separate web pages - Scottish History 843 - 1746 - written by Jim Birney.

Fife teachers may access the site from the button below. Unfortunately, for the time being, the inclusion of SCRAN inages restricts access owing to copyright conditions.

Stirling Castle

A view from the south west. The steep cliff is the side where the igneous rock was carved by an ice sheet to form the distinctive crag and tail feature.

People over the centuries used this natural prominence as a defensive location and a hill fort gave way to a large castle, for many years the place where Scotland's monarchs ruled.

Stirling Castle

A view looking south from the Wallace Monument. The steep slope of the previous image is on the right hand side. In this image the ice flow was from right to left with the crag on the right and the tail on the left, sloping down to the Forth.

Stirling - western edge

The housing belongs to the western limit of Stirling originally exapnding out along the main A9 trunk road from the bridging point onto Bridge of Allan and the north. A motorway now bypasses the city across to the west hidden from view by its embankments.

Stirling - north west - Bridge of Allan

The settlement is Bridge of Allan, a very popular suburb of Stirling with high quality residential properties. There is linear expansion from right to left following the B823 into Stirling but the Green Belt is still prominent.

Lower Course - this set of views were taken from the top of the Wallace Monument, Stirling.

The River Forth meaners across its floodplain at Stirling. The land liable to flooding was left to farming or sportsfields. Recent developments has seen the growth in housing and industrial estates which in many parts of the United Kingdom has resulted in widespread flooding during periods of exceptionally high rainfall.

Lower Course

Stirling has grown up around the castle built on the crag and tail volcanic vent in the middle distance. The meaners of the Forth helped restrict growth until relatively recent times. A study of OS maps would confirm the site and the constriction of transport routes to this "lowest" bridging point - an accolade which persisted until the construction of the Forth Rail Bridge in 1890 and the Kincardine Road Bridge in 1936.

Many important battles were fought here in the past as control of Stirling meant control of the routes north and south.

The Ochil Hills

A view to the east of Stirling. This prominent hill range rises from the floodplain along a long fault line. The hills were formed when lava poured out along the fault. The basalt and andesite rocks have been eroded to rounded hill tops about 2000 feet in height.

Minerals veins were mined for silver at Alva in the west of the range and for agate - a semi-precious stone - in the north east where the range ends at Balmerino on the banks of the Tay estuary.

Stirling Univerity

On the rolling foothills of the Ochils, to the north of Stirling lies the university on a picturesque site. In the right foreground are the buildings belonging to the technological park a partnership between the university and private enterprise.