By Matthew Shelley
Historic Scotland is feeling pretty chipper about the success of its £12 million revamp of Stirling Castle. Just five months after the opening of the castle’s refurbished renaissance royal palace, the revenues are up by £1.1 million and visitor figures have risen by 13 per cent. Much of the visitor feedback has also been glowing.
But what now? The palace project is good for Stirling, but the area needs much more to continue lifting its economic fortunes. Likewise, it provided gainful employment for many men and women who practice rare, even dying, traditional arts and crafts, but most of this work was temporary.
Last weekend, a conference at Stirling University reviewed the entire project and also cast an eye to the future. It had been a vast undertaking which not only returned the palace to how it may have looked when it was the childhood home of Mary Queen of Scots, but involved the creation of new exhibitions and galleries, along with a modernisation of the shops.
Here, I have to declare an interest as I worked on the project for some time and was fascinated by its ambition to return the shine to a Scottish cultural gem. But beyond that, in a time when publicly funded projects are frequently pilloried (did someone say Edinburgh trams?), it is valuable to look at one that was delivered as near as damn it on time, and a shade under budget.
During many years as a business journalist, I attended umpteen industry smug-fests where business folk (sometimes deservedly) slapped themselves on the back for one enterprise or another. The Rebirth of the Palace conference had a very different atmosphere. It focused on the research, craftsmanship and architectural issues involved in turning a bare-walled building, through which most visitors sped in a couple of minutes, into an international visitor attraction so richly decorated and furnished that one academic referred to it as a 16th-century “bling-fest”.
The huge public investment in the palace has seen 300,000 visitors pour into the castle since June. The conference also coincided with the annual Free Weekend, which saw 8,000 visitors cross the drawbridge without having to pay for tickets.
Yet, while one-off big projects are superb, they cannot be relied on to keep valuable crafts alive. And while extra visitors mean more jobs at the castle and give a boost to other local businesses, Stirling needs much more. Recent Labour and SNP administrations have delivered better housing, schools and brought other benefits to the area (I’ll leave it to them to squabble over who has done more). But both would acknowledge that the job is far from done.
If there is one big lesson from the palace project, it is that part of Scotland’s future lies in investing in the past. This demands large-scale public sector input to provide a springboard for private sector entrepreneurs.
Stirling will only boom when it truly becomes a destination in its own right. At present, it is too much of a stop-off for people heading north and south. This is a sad irony, as the Stewart monarchs of the late-1400s to mid-1500s developed it – ahead of Edinburgh – as the place which had everything. The castle, part-residence and part-fortress, housed all the grand buildings essential for the great royal events and celebrations. Visitors pitched up from all over Europe to attend the royal court – spending their cash in the local hostelries.
Stirling’s royal court generated jobs for everyone – from the craftsmen needed to realise one project after another, to innkeepers and merchants. They thrived thanks to continued government spending (using the tax revenues from our ancestors) which, in turn, was a magnet for private money. And the whole area also revelled in the prestige of having been the site of the two ancient military victories of Stirling Bridge and Bannockburn.
The conference started providing answers to the “what next” issue. Historic Scotland plans a conservation centre in Stirling which will be a centre of excellence for world-class Scottish craftsmen and women. It is also involved with the scheme for the new Battle of Bannockburn visitor centre, where the latest digital technology will be used to give a gut-wrenchingly realistic sense of what it was like to enter the fray in 1314.
What is interesting in an age where we tend to think of society’s dynamic “wealth creators” as being private sector business people is the drive and hunger that exists among (certain) civil servants, archaeologists, historians, tapestry weavers and wood carvers. In Stirling they were keen to march out of the castle gates, raise the flag for Scottish crafts, rekindle King Robert’s big bash and then seek fresh conquests.
A whole range of schemes and dreams was discussed offline at the conference. One of the most attractive, championed by the likes of the independent historian John Harrison (a significant contributor to the palace project), is to revive something of the faded fortunes of the fabulous royal parklands and gardens that stood round the foot of the castle rock. Much of the land is still Crown property, so an imaginative and well-researched scheme enabling visitors to enjoy the playground of Stewart kings and queens is realistic.
The challenges would be substantial, and it would take years to carry out the research and get a viable scheme in place. Political and academic rows would doubtless slow things down, but the prize is worthwhile – an attraction which is below the Old Town, just a short walk from the city centre shops.
Stirling’s heritage is a phenomenal asset, and both major parties have put a commendable emphasis on harnessing its economic and cultural potential. But more has to be done to give the city the critical mass it needs if Americans, Chinese or Indians are going to flip through holiday brochures and decide it is where they want to base themselves for a week or so.
Anyone who succeeds in giving Stirling this degree of visitor appeal will manage a feat of historic proportions – returning it to the status that James V envisaged when he built the castle’s renaissance palace. And I’m sure it will not escape the attention of SNP or Labour policymakers that there is a traditional wisdom which says that he who holds Stirling holds Scotland.
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