The Bore Stone: Where Bruce Is Said to Have Raised His Standard at Bannockburn

Why it matters

For three hundred years visitors to the battlefield of Bannockburn have come to see the spot where Robert the Bruce is supposed to have planted his royal standard on 23 June 1314, the first day of the battle. The marker was the Bore Stone, a heavy stone with a hole bored through it to take a flagpole. It became a place of pilgrimage, then a souvenir quarry, and today the stone itself has gone. Its story is a good lesson in how a national legend grows around a real place.

The stone and the legend

When it was described in 1859, the Bore Stone was a roughly circular block about 3 feet across and 2 feet thick, with a hole about 3 inches wide through the middle. Holed stones like this were common in the countryside, usually as bases for posts or gateways. The tradition linking this one to Bruce does not appear in writing until 1723, more than four hundred years after the battle, and the heritage record Canmore calls it improbable.

That did not stop visitors. Through the 18th and 19th centuries people chipped pieces off as keepsakes. A tall flagpole was put up beside it on 25 June 1870 to fly the saltire, and it has done so almost continuously since.

What happened to it

By the 20th century little of the stone remained. The National Trust for Scotland built a memorial cairn in 1954, and the surviving pieces were incorporated into the monument. A 1967 excavation at the site found nothing of the stone in the ground, and later reports record that the fragments that had been on display were stolen and never recovered. During the restoration for the 700th anniversary in 2014, the original position of the Bore Stone was marked inside the Rotunda, the circular concrete monument opened by the Queen in June 1964.

Visiting the Borestone site

The Rotunda, the flagpole and Charles Pilkington Jackson’s great bronze statue of Bruce on horseback stand together on the Borestone Brae, on the southern edge of Stirling. The grounds are open and free; the National Trust for Scotland’s Battle of Bannockburn visitor centre beside them has an interactive battle experience and charges for entry. Check the Trust’s website for opening times.

Around Bannockburn and Stirling

From the Rotunda you look north to the castle rock of Stirling. Bannockburn was Bruce’s answer to the earlier Scottish victory at Stirling Bridge in 1297, fought below the castle. In 1488 another battle was fought within a mile or two of the Bore Stone: at Sauchieburn James III was defeated and killed, and he lies buried at Cambuskenneth Abbey by the Forth.

Across the river, the little town of Clackmannan keeps its own ancient stone, the Stone of Mannan, and the Bruce family’s tower. For whisky, Deanston occupies an old cotton mill on the River Teith at Doune, and to the south Falkirk Distillery sits near the giant horse heads of the Kelpies. For more stones with a story, see our guide to the famous stones of Scotland.

Sources

• Canmore — Bannockburn, Borestone (site 46169) and archaeology notes.
• Historic Environment Scotland — listed building records for the Rotunda and Bruce statue, Borestone Brae.
• National Trust for Scotland — Battle of Bannockburn.