The Abbey Craig is the hill upon which the Wallace Monument stands, at Causewayhead, just to the north of

Stirling Stirling (; ; ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city in Central Belt, central Scotland, northeast of Glasgow and north-west of Edinburgh. The market town#Scotland, market town, surrounded by rich farmland, grew up connecting the roya ...

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

Physical geography

The Abbey Craig is part of a complex quartz-dolerite intrusion or sill within

Carboniferous The Carboniferous ( ) is a Geologic time scale, geologic period and System (stratigraphy), system of the Paleozoic era (geology), era that spans 60 million years, from the end of the Devonian Period Ma (million years ago) to the beginning of the ...

strata, at the western edge of the Central Coal Field, known as the Stirling Sill. The quartz-dolerite, being much harder than the surrounding coal measures, has been exposed due to erosion, including by

glaciation A glacial period (alternatively glacial or glaciation) is an interval of time (thousands of years) within an ice age that is marked by colder temperatures and glacier advances. Interglacials, on the other hand, are periods of warmer climate be ...

. The characteristic crag and tail shape of the crag reflects this glacial shaping.

Toponymy

''Craig'', or ''crag'', describes a post-glacial crag and tail landscape feature. The

abbey An abbey is a type of monastery used by members of a religious order under the governance of an abbot or abbess. Abbeys provide a complex of buildings and land for religious activities, work, and housing of Christians, Christian monks and nun ...

is Cambuskenneth Abbey, on the north bank of the

River Forth The River Forth is a major river in central Scotland, long, which drains into the North Sea on the east coast of the country. Its drainage basin covers much of Stirlingshire in Scotland's Central Belt. The Scottish Gaelic, Gaelic name for the ...

, about 1 km to the south.

History

The hill is the site of William Wallace's HQ ahead of the battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297, which was part of the Scottish Wars of Independence. The hilltop was also defended during the Early Medieval Period, and features a vitrified hillfort, destroyed by fire in the 6th or 7th centuries AD and then refortified in 8th or 9th centuries AD, as demonstrated by two phases of archaeological excavation, the first by SUAT Archaeology in 2001 and the second by Murray Cook, Stirling Council's Archaeologist in 2012.

References

External links

* Hills of the Scottish Midland Valley Geology of Scotland Mountains and hills of Stirling (council area) {{Stirling-geo-stub