Wallace Monument - Braveheart Statue

Braveheart Statue

In 1996 Tom Church, a monumental mason from Brechin, was inspired by the 1995 Mel Gibson film Braveheart while recovering from a heart bypass operation. He carved a 4-metre (13 ft) tall, 12 metric tonne statue of Wallace from two blocks of sandstone. The statue resembles Gibson's depiction of Wallace, featuring a targe emblazoned with "Braveheart", a military flail, and a claymore. Calling the statue Freedom, he leased it to Stirling Council, who in 1997 installed it in the car park of the visitor centre at the foot of the craig.

There it proved to be controversial; The Independent described it as "among the most loathed pieces of public art in Scotland" and one local called it a "lump of crap", but the statue was popular with tourists.

The statue was subject to regular vandalism: its face was gouged out, it had paint thrown over it, it was struck with a hammer, and someone chipped off the decapitated head of the Governor of York which had formerly graced the statue's base. As a result it was enclosed in a security fence.

Plans to expand the visitor centre, including a new restaurant and reception, led to the statue's removal in 2008. Church offered it for sale for £350,000, hoping it would find a buyer in North America; of its failure to sell Church's agent said "I can’t understand how the sale hasn’t taken off. When Freedom was first unveiled, the critics labelled it the biggest piece of iconic art to come out of Scotland in the 20th century." Church later offered to donate the statue to the Trump Organization, to act as a centrepiece of the golf resort Trump was planning in Balmedie, Aberdeenshire, but after its removal from the site the statue was returned to the sculptor, who displays it in a castle-like installation at his Brechin workshop.