Stirling Smith Museum and Art Gallery - Museums and Collections in Stirling

Museums and Collections in Stirling

It was said that ‘Smith’s munificence inaugurated what might be called a new era in the annals of the town of Stirling’. Certainly, the desire to have such a facility in the burgh was long standing. The Stirling School of Arts which was part library, part mechanics institute was formed in 1825 with the intention of building such an establishment. It started out with a small lending library in a rented room in Broad Street in November 1825. Throughout its life, it attracted lecturers of national note. Its Annual Soirees were demonstrations of intent. In 1854 for example, the need for ‘a lecture room, library and museum, and a public place where interesting specimens of art may be deposited’ was again reiterated and Sir Archibald Alison declared that ‘Stirling will take its place in literature, science and art, which it has long in Scottish history taken in arms’.

The 1854 Soiree showed the potential of a permanent gallery and museum. The Corn Exchange was hired for the purpose, and the walls hung with tartans and evergreens supplied by the Drummonds. There was also a plough and sheaf of wheat from the Drummond Agricultural Museum. It is evident that the different branches of the Drummond family had given considerable assistance. They were tartan retailers, seedsmen, evangelical and temperance publishers and the owners of the Agricultural Museum (established 1831) to show the latest innovations in agriculture. Along one wall, prints and casts were shown, and there was an arrangement of Grecian statuary in front of the platform. Model steam and water engines were displayed, along with the chair of the Reverend James Guthrie, who had been martyred for his beliefs in 1661. This chair became part of the Macfarlane Museum collection, and is now in the Stirling Smith.

There were various private collections of antiquities in Stirling in the nineteenth century. In the Douglas Room in Stirling Castle was an assortment of arms and armour, including the pikes and other weapons taken from the radical weavers of 1820, and the pulpit of John Knox. The collection of Dr. Alexander Paterson (1822–1897), ‘long one of the chief attractions of Bridge of Allan’ had the skull of Darnley, a piece of Sir William Wallace’s fetters, a fragment of Robert the Bruce’s coffin and the key of Loch Leven Castle. The collection was sold in January 1899 and items from it were gifted to the Smith over the years.

The Macfarlane Museum was assembled by John Macfarlane of Coneyhill, Bridge of Allan (1785–1868) whose wealth was derived from textile manufacture in Manchester. He was the great local champion of the principle of the free library in Stirling where he opened a library and reading room in 1854. In 1881 the Macfarlane Free Library was transferred to the Smith along with the Macfarlane Museum which contained many important local objects and the Smith curator was charged with the additional task of looking after it. The Museum Hall, Bridge of Allan was built by the Macfarlane Trustees in 1887 as a Concert Hall. The marble bust of John MacFarlane was acquired for the Smith collection in 2002.

When the Smith site was selected, it was not in an advantageous part of the burgh. 1400 people signed a petition pointing this out. The building was the second to be built on the north side of the Dumbarton Road, in the King’s Park, which was under development as an up-market residential area. The King’s Park was cut off from the old town by the medieval wall. It remained unconnected until a new vehicular road was driven through at the Corn Exchange when the Carnegie Library was built in 1904. There was no direct road to the Smith. The pathway from the High School of Stirling (now the Stirling Highland Hotel) was created as a main access route to the Smith only after the Institute was opened to the public. The issue of breaching the medieval wall was one which was traditionally opposed by the people of Stirling. Today, these issues would be resolved by public consultation. The autocratic way in which the site was selected and the extinction of the hope for a museum facility in the old town was deeply resented, as shown by the obituary notice in the Stirling Observer which recounted the story of the Stirling School of Art:

‘Died at Stirling, on the 8th ult. of sheer neglect, after a lingering illness borne with the utmost indifference on the part of its professed friends, the Stirling School of Art in the 50th year of its age…So hopeless did the condition of the association become that the Directors mercifully cut its sufferings short by shooting it, as they would have done an old horse that had served its day.’

The obituary writer went on to note that:

‘that centre of intellectual darkness known as Denny, and Airth, Callander, Menstrie and St Ninians all had lectures. The Regime of the Provost of Stirling was like that of Napoleon who made Paris beautiful with boulevards, but did nothing for moral and intellectual welfare of his people. We do not forget the Smith Institute. It is a great boon to the town, and is calculated to be a powerful promoter of that ‘sweetness and light’ which we so much need. But it is the gift of a private individual, and neither the Council nor the Community are entitled to take any credit for it. What have we done for the working classes? As a community, nothing, absolutely nothing. As regards the Smith; its distance from the centre of the town must prevent it from ever becoming a popular resort. It is all very well to say that if a man wants knowledge he will not grudge to walk a mile or two for it. That is true. But what is required is not so much to supply those with knowledge who desire it, as to place it in an inviting form at the very doors of those who have no wish for it, in order that, if possible, such a wish may be begotten.’