Wolf Craig

For Friday Funday we took ourselves off to Stirling to see the town rather than historical sites but which was mostly taken in the Thistles Shopping Centre. However we did poke our noses out into the pedestrian area of Port Street, where I discovered the amazing building called Wolf Craig, by architect John Allan who signed his name in one of the many decorative panels, with the date 1897. Here is what I have learned from sources on Stirlingshire websites:-

John Allan, the architect who designed many of Stirling’s most interesting buildings, was born in Carnock, Fife, on the 21st of April 1847 and moved to Stirling around 1875. He was a prolific author, who wrote many booklets and articles. He was an active advocate of the need for better town planning in Scotland also for financial  investment in housing and improvement of housing conditions for the poor. In one article he wrote  “It’s absurd to preach temperance and soberness and charity to dwellers in insanitary homes without trying to help them in practical ways” 

At Five storeys high with a lead covered “Cup and Saucer dome", this is the most well-known of all John Allan’s designs. Constructed in 1897, the Wolf Craig on Port Street was built to house a grocer’s emporium for Robertson & Macfarlane. Allan’s interest in symbols and symbolism can clearly be seen in this building. Allan used symbols and decorative elements throughout his career to express his professional identity and reference local history, and the Wolf Craig building represents Allan at his best. Constructed with steel frame and fitted with electric lighting was one of the first of its kind and Welsh Ruabon brickwork, panels of decorative tiles, featured a famous wolf sculpture relating the story that a howling wolf alerted sentries of an imminent attack by Danish raiders and thereby saved Stirling. Under this Stirling wolf, the inscription reads:
Here in auld days
The wolf roam’d
In a hole of the rock
In ambush lay

From the town we drove to Cambus Pools Nature Reserve, which entailed a walk by the River Devon and circular walk back to the car, past a large number of buildings associated with the Diageo company for around 3.5 miles, but which felt more like 5 or 6. Of wildlife we saw speckled wood and green-veined white butterflies, of birds heron, goosander, mallard, green- and gold-finches, house martins and wren, plus whatever gull was antagonising the heron.

All in all a pleasant day despite the dull weather.