Stirling Castle
Overview
- For ships named after the castle, see Stirling Castle (disambiguation)Stirling Castle (disambiguation)Stirling Castle is a castle in Stirling, Scotland.Stirling Castle may also refer to:* HMS Stirling Castle, a number of Royal Navy ships* MV Stirling Castle, a liner built in Belfast in 1935 and scrapped in 1966...
Stirling Castle, located in Stirling
Stirling
Stirling is a city and former ancient burgh in Scotland, and is at the heart of the wider Stirling council area. The city is clustered around a large fortress and medieval old-town beside the River Forth...
, is one of the largest and most important castle
Castle
A castle is a type of fortified structure built in Europe and the Middle East during the Middle Ages by European nobility. Scholars debate the scope of the word castle, but usually consider it to be the private fortified residence of a lord or noble...
s, both historically and architecturally, in Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
. The castle sits atop Castle Hill, an intrusive crag
Crag and tail
A crag is a rocky hill or mountain, generally isolated from other high ground. Crags are formed when a glacier or ice sheet passes over an area that contains a particularly resistant rock formation...
, which forms part of the Stirling Sill
Stirling Sill
The Stirling Sill is an outcropping of a large quartz-dolerite intrusion or sill that underlies a large part of central Scotland, and may be contiguous at great depth. The sill is of very late Carboniferous age or more probably Permian, as it penetrates the coal measures, often in bedding planes...
geological formation. It is surrounded on three sides by steep cliffs, giving it a strong defensive position.
