Anne Crone and Coralie Mills
Stirling Castle is the pre-eminent medieval royal residence and stronghold in Scotland, originating in or before the 12th century with significant remodelling in the 16th century under the Stewart monarchy. The castle complex was further modified in the 18th and 19th centuries when it served as a major British Army base.
Over the past three decades the timberwork in the Castle complex (some of it ex situ) has been extensively sampled for dendrochronological analysis, between 1995 and 2005 during major renovations to the Great Hall, the Chapel Royal and the Palace (Crone & Fawcett 1998; Crone 2008), in 2019 in the King’s Old Buildings (Mills 2019) and in 2022 in the Fort Major’s House and Main Guard House (Darrah & Mills 2023).
The analysis of 137 oak and 94 pine timbers from the complex has revealed a history of the trade and exploitation of timber that is a microcosm of that of Scotland as a whole. It has identified ten distinct episodes of building activity, from the mid-15th century to the early 19th century. A small amount of native-grown oak was used in the earliest episodes but after that construction was carried out solely with imported timber. This case study charts the evolution of this trade to highlight the value of dendro-provenancing, both for historic narratives and the authenticity of replacement materials.
Scottish oak
The only examples of native oak found in the Castle complex had been re-used and must represent earlier buildings that were dismantled to make way for the current buildings (Crone & Fawcett 1998, 70, 73). These include two very large oak beams which had been re-used as lintels in the Chapel Royal. These were from very long-lived trees, one with 342 growth-rings, which had probably been felled in the mid-15th century (tpq 1406).
The four main beams in the Kings Bedchamber in the Royal Palace were also Scottish oak and had been felled in AD 1500/01. These all bore redundant joints and carpenters’ marks and were re-used during the AD 1539 construction of the Royal Palace. The timbers were all relatively small with between 80-100 growth-rings; many other timbers in the Bedchamber roof were too young to be dated and thus are also probably native (Crone 2008, Table 6). The only other example of native oak was found in the North Range of the Palace and this too had been felled in AD 1500/01. This points to a stockpile of old timber which was recycled during the construction of the Palace.
This reflects the wider pattern of exploitation of the native oak resource. Large long-lived oaks appear to have still been available, certainly in NE Scotland and SW Scotland until the mid-15th century (Crone & Mills 2012, 335, 353; Mills & Crone 2012; Crone 2021; Mills 2023) but by the end of that century only relatively young oak was available. This is the type of timber used in the roofs of Alloa Tower (Crone & Mills 2012, 353) and the Stable roof at Falkland Palace (Crone 2017, 125). It explains why Scotland turned to imported timber for its building needs.
Scandinavian oak
Almost 90% of the dated oak beams in Stirling Palace came from southern Scandinavia. These included re-used oaks felled in AD 1505 found scattered throughout the Palace. These may have come from the ‘Ald kyrk’ where work was recorded in AD 1504-5 and which was probably demolished to make way for the Palace, so they too may have ended up in the stockpile of old timber (ibid 4-5). However, the bulk of the Scandinavian oak was used in the construction of James V’ Renaissance Palace built between AD 1538 and AD 1542 (Fig 3).
The oaks were felled in AD 1538/9 and AD 1539 so were probably shipped from Scandinavia in the summer of AD 1539. They have been dendro-provenanced to either Denmark and/or Sweden; it is difficult to disentangle these two sources as they were politically and economically linked during the 15th and 16th centuries. In AD 1539 there is a record that a Charles Murray was paid for buying timber in Denmark for use at Stirling (ibid 14) but it could as easily have come from Sweden, parts of which were then under Danish rule. Whatever the exact source, it was favoured by the Crown because timbers from the same source were also used in a later construction episode in AD 1591-3, probably representing works in the Palace in preparation for the arrival of James VI and his queen, Anna of Denmark.
Oak from Scandinavia was used extensively throughout Scotland during the 16th century but it mostly came from Norway (Crone & Mills 2012, Table 1; Crone et al 2017). It is only in the Royal Palaces, Stirling and Falkland (Crone 2017, 125) that timber from Denmark/Sweden can be confidently identified, possibly because the Crown had a special trading relationship with Denmark at the time.
Eastern Baltic oak
During the construction of the Renaissance Palace another source of oak was used for the doors and internal furnishings. This was the straight-grained oak from the Eastern Baltic which was particularly prized for boards to be painted or carved. Baltic oak boards were used for the heavy plain doors throughout the Palace and for the carved ‘Stirling Heads’ which decorated the Inner Hall’s ceiling (ibid 9-10).
Dendro-provenancing (Daly & Tyers 2022) has identified the lower Nemunas river region around Klaipeda in Lithuania as the likely source of all the boards used in the doors (Baltic 1). Most of the boards used in the Heads also came from this region but there were also a handful which came from southern Poland (Baltic 2). This suggests that the suppliers were merchants who shipped timber from the whole region of the eastern Baltic.
Scandinavian pine
Scots pine from Norway is used throughout the Castle from the mid-16th century into the 19th century. It first appears as sawn boards used as flooring in the room above the Queens Bedchamber (Crone 2008, 17-18; Crone et al 2017, Tables 5 & 6). The pine had been felled in AD 1535 but the floorboards lay over oak beams which had been felled in AD 1538/9 so they formed part of the construction of the Renaissance Palace. These are the earliest examples of Norwegian pine boards in Scotland but they were subsequently used extensively in many 16th and 17th century painted board-and-beam ceilings in Scotland, the boards, or ‘deals’ being imported into Scotland by merchants trading directly with farmers in southern Norway (Crone et al 2017, 28 – 31).
Southern Norway continued to be the source of pine used in the Castle but from the mid-17th century the pine is found primarily as beams, not boards. Pine beams, felled between AD 1664 and AD 1671, were inserted to strengthen the Palace floors as part of renovations undertaken after the Restoration of Charles II. Pine felled in AD 1795/96 was used in the Main Guard House roof and pine felled in AD 1809/10 was used in the roof over the Fort Major’s House (Darrah & Mills 2023, 37). These later buildings relate to the military use of the Castle as a garrison but it seems the British Army continued to use the same source as previous builders (Fig 5).
Eastern Baltic pine
A massive eastern Baltic pine beam felled in 1750 was used to enlarge part of the King’s Old Buildings (Mills 2019), marking the earliest identified use of pine from this source at Stirling Castle. As part of the military occupation of the Castle the Great Hall was modified to create additional barrack accommodation. Pine beams inserted during these modifications were felled in 1783 and 1786 (Crone 2008; 18-19) and these were also dendro-provenanced to the countries bordering the eastern Baltic. Timber being shipped out of the eastern Baltic ports during this period is likely to have originated much further east, from Russia and Belarus.
Stirling Castle’s ongoing tree-ring story
The investment HES has made in a series of dendrochronological studies at Stirling Castle has allowed the evolution and re-modelling of the complex to be charted within a very precise chronological framework. With such a large body of data, the work also allows the nuances of the timber supply history of an elite site to be traced, from access to the last stuttering stages of a native oak timber supply in 1500 to the long-standing reliance on imported timber, from the 16th century to the 19th century, with oak and pine sourced from Scandinavia and the Eastern Baltic for various specific uses. Eventually the wheel turned full circle when, in 1995, some 350 majestic oaks were felled in a Perthshire Forest for the reconstruction of the medieval-style hammerbeam roof of Stirling Castle’s Great Hall (Fig 6).
References
Crone, B A 2008 ‘Dendrochronological analysis of the oak and pine timbers’, Stirling Castle Palace. Archaeological and historical research. http://sparc.scran.ac.uk
Crone, A 2017 ‘List 297. Dendrochronologically dated buildings from Scotland: 2015–17’, 123-5 in Alcock, N & Tyers, C ‘Tree-ring date lists 2017’, Vernacular Architecture 48.1, 82-133.
Crone, A 2021 ‘Dendrochronology’, in Roy, M Pits and boots; excavations at the Bon Accord Centre, Aberdeen, 96-100. Oxford: Archaeopress.
Crone, B A & Fawcett, R 1998 ‘Dendrochronology, documents and the timber trade; new evidence for the building history of Stirling Castle, Scotland’, Med Archaeol 42, 68-87.
Crone, B A & Mills, CM 2012 ‘Timber in Scottish buildings, 1450 – 1800; a dendrochronological perspective’, Proc Soc Antiq Scot 142, 329-69.
Crone, A, Bath, M & Pearce, M 2017 The dendrochronology and art history of a sample of 16th and 17th Century painted ceilings. Historic Environment Scotland Research Report. https://www.historicenvironment.scot/archives-and-research/publications/publication/?publicationId=535234b2-8dc1-42f8-8d1b-a73600c76fee
Daly, A & Tyers, I 2022 ‘The sources of Baltic oak’, J Archaeol Sci 139. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2022.105550
Darrah, H & Mills, C M 2023 Stirling Castle: Fort Major’s House and Main Guard House roofs, historic timbers and dendrochronology study. Dendrochronicle Report 0239.
Mills, C M 2019 Stirling Castle, King’s Old Buildings: Dendrochronology report. Dendrochronicle Report 0177.
Mills, C M 2023 South East Scotland Oak Dendrochronology (SESOD) project: An overview. Discovery and Excavation in Scotland (2022) 23, 6-7.
Mills, C M and Crone, A 2012 ‘Dendrochronological evidence for Scotland’s native timber resources over the last 1000 years’, Scottish Forestry 66, 18-33.