In many ways, the top o’ the toun has always been the talk o’ the toun, for the old town of Stirling from Castlehill to the bottom of King Street is the town scape which visitors understand to be the essential Stirling. This is the Stirling which has delighted and informed visitors for generations. It has had to be reinvented many times over.

Today’s photograph shows the visit of Queen Elizabeth in 1962. She was conducted down Broad Street and Bow Street (formerly the Bow) by Provost William MacFarlane Gray (1958 – 1964). The occasion was the celebration of the long process of regeneration after the slum clearance. When her predecessor Queen Victoria came down the Bow by carriage in 1842, “she had tears of fright in her pretty eyes”, because of the steep gradient of the street.