Children can win a fabulous toy from Hamleys by entering our Stirling Heads Art Competition. It’s open to youngsters up to the age of 12, and all they have to do is post or email us their own design for a Stirling Head.

Competition now closed

The winner of our Stirling Heads Art competition is Erin Bellerby, aged 7 from Addingham. Congratulations Erin! Your Hamleys prize is on the way to you.

See Erin's version of a Stirling Head here

The Stirling Heads are beautiful 16th-century oak carvings showing kings, queens, heroes and people from the royal court, including a poet and a jester (you can read more about them below). Some replicas we have had made are pictured here to show what they are like. These are currently being put on a palace ceiling and will be brightly painted, like the originals once were.

To enter the competition draw a colourful head that you have imagined and tell us who, or what, it shows. We will pick the three we like the most and the lucky winners will get one of the following:

Pictures should be on an A4 piece of paper, not larger, and emailed pictures should not be more than 3 MB.

Entries need to be received by 5.30pm (UK time) on Monday, 25th October. Entries need to include the name and age of the artist. We will also need a name, address, phone number or email to contact the parents or guardians of our winners.

The Stirling Heads are a remarkable collection of metre-wide oak medallions which date from the mid-16th century. The heads originally decorated the ceiling of the King’s Inner Hall and at least one other apartment in the royal palace at Stirling Castle. A new set has been created by Historic Scotland and are being used to recreate the lost ceiling of the King’s Inner Hall.

Each oak medallion – or roundel – was hand-carved by skilled craftsmen. A total of 34 have survived the centuries since their creation sometime after 1530. There is nothing quite like them anywhere else in the world. One of the most important parts of the palace project is to put the Stirling Heads on display in their own gallery.

They will be on show in glass cases designed to show them off to their best effect – while keeping them in a humidity and temperature-controlled environment to ensure their conservation. Lighting will be kept at an optimum level to help safeguard this precious collection. The display area will be the centrepiece of a gallery exploring the background to life and the arts in mid-16th century Scotland.