John Erskine, Earl of Mar, was a careful, austere man who briefly held the highest office in Scotland. In September 1571 he was elected Regent of Scotland for the infant King James VI, whose education he had personally overseen at Stirling Castle. The Erskine family had held the hereditary keepership of the castle for generations; their job was to keep the princes of Scotland safe and to teach them how to be kings. Mar lasted just over a year. He died in October 1572, before his great house at the foot of the castle was complete. *Wark* is the Scots word for *work*, in the sense of *building*; locals still call the ruin Mar's Lodging. The datestones say 1570 and 1572. Some sources claim it was never finished, but there is little hard evidence either way. His widow Annabella Murray, the *A* possibly hidden in the carved crowned letter on the facade, certainly continued to use it.

The facade is one of the finest pieces of Scottish Renaissance domestic architecture left in the country. It is nearly symmetrical, organised around the gatehouse frontispiece with its two polygonal turrets. The stone carvings draw on European pattern books, displaying royal heraldry beside the Erskine arms in a deliberate echo of the palace at Stirling Castle just above. The general articulation and architectural mouldings are so close to the royal palace that the Earl probably commissioned William MacDowall, the Master of Work to the Crown of Scotland, to design it. Tradition holds that some of the stones were salvaged from the dissolution of Cambuskenneth Abbey across the Forth. The carved inscriptions on the gatehouse are inscriptions of nervous pride. The north tower reads: *THE MOIR I STAND ON OPPIN HITHT, MY FAVLTIS MOIR SVBIECT AR TO SITHT.* The more I stand on open height, my faults more subject are to sight. The exit arch is brusquer: *ESSPY SPEIK FVRTH AND SPAIR NOTHT, CONSIDDIR VEIL I CAIR NOTHT.* See, speak forth and spare not. Consider well, I care not.

After the Regent's death, Mar's Wark belonged to his widow. Burgh records refer to it as Lady Mar's House and place it at the centre of court life in late-sixteenth-century Stirling. In April 1584 supporters of the Earl of Angus were ordered to surrender the castle and the town gates and the lodging of Annabella, Countess of Mar, all in the same breath, suggesting it was already considered a place of fortification. The captive Earl of Gowrie was brought here for his trial the following month. In December 1593 Anne of Denmark, pregnant with the future Prince Henry, was first lodged at the Earl of Argyll's house and then at Lady Mar's lodging until her rooms in the castle were ready. In May 1595 a banquet for the marriage of the king's mistress Anne Murray and Lord Glamis was held here. In 1602 a French ambassador, the Baron de Tour, had a quiet word with the Countess in these rooms.

Time was harder on Mar's Wark than on the church beside it or the castle above. Because the lodging commanded Broad Street and the town, it was later used to mount artillery during civil unrest, an indignity for what had been a residence. The upper storey is gone. The roof is gone. The windowless front facade is what survives, with the basement vaults at street level, originally fitted with doors and windows that suggest they were meant to be let as shops. You can still climb to the first floor. The Scottish Government protects the ruin as a scheduled monument; Historic Environment Scotland keeps it open to anyone walking up Broad Street to the castle gates. The Wark is the first great building you pass on the processional route to the palace. It addresses you, frankly, in its own voice. *I pray all lookers on this lodging, with gentle eye to give their judging.* Four hundred and fifty years on, the request still seems fair.