Murray Place photos

These pictures, printed in the Observer of 1961, shows Murray Place as it was then and also around 1900.

‘It is interesting to reflect that some of the townsfolk living at the time when the old photograph was taken remember when Murray Place was only a narrow lane from what is now the foot of Friars Street, passing along by an orchard called Spring Gardens, to the Burgh Mill, now the site of the gasworks,’said the paper.

In 1843, the street was named in honour of the then Laird of the Polmaise, Mr William Murray who had much to do with its formation.

One of the many tales about Stirling’s historic Tolbooth being haunted appeared in the Observer of late 1961.

The building was constructed between 1703 and 1705 and for a time was a seat of local government, a jail and a courthouse.

Prisoners held in the tower were hanged outside the building and it is this grim history which fuels rumours of strange beings stalking its corridors.

It was against this background that pals David Park, 17, 61 Cowane Street, and Allan Rodgers, 16, 20 Haig Avenue, Drip Road, both Stirling, paid a visit to the Tolbooth in November, 1961.

They were members of Stirling Judo Club, which occupied one of the building’s former robing rooms, used by judges, and the teenagers were there to tidy away rubbish.

It was dark when they arrived and they entered by a side entrance, locking the heavily-studded door behind them. They climbed an unlit spiral staircase having decided to burn the rubbish in the fireplace of one of the old cells on an upper floor.