It’s funny how some things change and others stay the same – even with the passing of centuries. As PA to the castle manager I’ve got a lot in common with the scribes who worked for the medieval governors. They did similar admin – ordering things in, making payments, sending letters, keeping records. It really came home to me a few years ago when I was ordering materials for the repair and conservation of the castle. I thought how back in the 16th century someone pretty much like me would have been arranging to get the stone and timber to build the new royal palace.

Then there’s the changes. I picture those scribes sitting at wooden benches, scratching everything out on parchment with big quill pens. I wonder what they’d think if they were transported to my office today, with a computer and ergonomic office chair. Mind you, I couldn’t get on with computers when they first came in – that was before moving to Historic Scotland, when I worked for the prison service. No emails, internet, or electronic records and ordering, just typewriters, carbon paper and Gestetners.

But it’s not just technology that’s changed in my career. It’s been a bit a switch going from being secretary to a prison governor, whose job was to stop people getting out, to working for visitor services at the castle and trying to pull visitors in. But again, not everything is different, my office at the castle is in a very old building and oddly enough there are bars on the windows.

Val Neill, PA to the castle manager.

It’s a skip and a jump these days to get from Stirling to Krakow, in Poland. Down the motorway to Edinburgh Airport, board a plane and you can be there in time for an afternoon tour of the Wawel Palace. I’ve just made the trip myself and it couldn’t have been easier – very different from the 1530s. Back then the 1,066 mile journey involved sailing tempestuous oceans in small wooden ships before traipsing rudimentary roads on foot or horseback. Despite all this there were projects taking place at about the same time in Stirling and Krakow which had remarkable similarities. It seems that both Sigismund I of Poland and James V of Scotland came up with the idea of decorating the throne room ceilings of their palaces with large numbers of carved wooden heads. In each case it was as part of their marriage celebrations – the one to Bona Sforza of Naples and the other to Mary de Guise.

As manager of the project to return the Stirling palace to how it may have looked when it was new I very much wanted to see Wawel, and particularly the ceiling. It is the nearest surviving equivalent to what we will have when a replica set of the Stirling Heads are fixed to the ceiling of the King’s Inner Hall in a few months’ time. There are big differences between the two, as the Polish ones are three-dimensional rather than being in great carved oak medallions, but the basic concepts had much in common – when you entered the presence of the king there would be dozens of painted wooden faces staring down at you. Wawel was very impressive. And it was exciting to look round a successful visitor attraction with similarities to what we are aiming for in Stirling.

While there is no direct evidence that the Wawel ceiling was a direct inspiration for the one at Stirling, there were a fair number of Scottish merchants in Poland at the time. Even more tantalizing is the fact that the oak for the Stirling Heads was actually from Poland. So standing there, staring up at the Polish heads, I was wondering if those little sailing ships that plied the oceans between the kingdoms transported more than just timber – perhaps there was also a cargo of innovative ideas about contemporary art.

Peter Buchanan, Stirling Castle Palace Project Manager.

An assemblage of hanging baskets gave me a warm welcome to the Royal Borough of Stirling as I stepped from a train onto the platform. I was a National Serviceman with the Royal Army Medical Corps, it was 1958, and I had been posted to the Medical Reception Station which is known as the Argyll’s Lodging. It was to change my life completely from the mining community of St. Helens where I was born.

Sweaty and out of breath my first Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders casualty was waiting for me in a WW11 ambulance, needing to be taken to our military hospital at Cowglen. Over the next 18 months I came to admire and respect the A&SH gallantry and history. They have taken part in conflicts from their inception in 1794 to the present in Afghanistan.

Little did I realise that 50 years later I would step back over the moat of Stirling Castle when I joined the Stirling Castle Writing Group. You are breathing in a lungful of history as soon as you step into the Guards Square. Destiny has drawn me back to this mythical, magical lodgings of security. I’m part of its history. A legacy is my military service in the story of Stirling Castle, which has been recorded on the Your Past Their Future video for posterity.

Walk on the lawn of the Royal Gardens and you are walking in the footsteps of royalty. This is where I belong: This is My Stirling Castle.

Jim Statter

This week’s contribution comes from Jim Statter, who was a National Serviceman when he first came to the castle. We would love to hear other people’s memories of the castle and have created a new area on our website My Stirling Castle. To submit your memories to the website and also be entered into a competition please read on.