The carved facade
A gatehouse between two polygonal towers, covered in royal arms, grotesque faces and inscriptions in old Scots.
A facade with no house behind it. That is all that remains of the mansion John Erskine, Earl of Mar and Regent of Scotland, raised at the very top of the town to announce his standing, a short walk up from Stirling Castle, of which he was keeper. Datestones on the wall give 1570 and 1572; the Earl died in the autumn of the second year, and the house was probably never finished quite as he intended. The name is a small joke of history: 'wark' is old Scots for a building, so this is simply Mar's Building. What you see from the street is the east front only: a central gatehouse guarded by two polygonal towers, royal arms and Erskine heraldry, grotesque stone faces that once spouted rainwater, and carved inscriptions in Middle Scots that even locals struggle to read. At pavement level, vaulted cellars open onto the street through doors and windows and were very likely designed as shops to let, a surprisingly commercial touch for a sixteenth-century aristocrat's home. The upper storey is gone, and behind the wall there is nothing but grass. The building's afterlife outran its life as a home. Anne of Denmark, wife of James VI, lodged here in 1593; a royal wedding banquet followed in 1595; then, because the site commands Broad Street, cannon were mounted on it in times of unrest. During the 1715 Jacobite rising it was turned into a barracks, and afterwards leased to the town council as a workhouse, where Stirling's destitute were fed and housed in return for labour. The story goes that the Jacobite bombardment of the castle in 1746 dealt the final blow; the workhouse moved elsewhere. Today it is a scheduled monument in the care of Historic Environment Scotland. Be honest with yourself: this is a five- or ten-minute stop, seen free from the pavement at any hour, not a destination. Its value is its position, halfway along the walk between the castle, the Church of the Holy Rude, Argyll's Lodging and the Old Town Jail, so fold it into that route, photograph the carvings and move on. The approach is steep and cobbled, which matters with a pushchair; in summer the crowd coming down from the castle streams past without anyone ever queuing here.
A gatehouse between two polygonal towers, covered in royal arms, grotesque faces and inscriptions in old Scots.
Street-level vaulted cellars, very likely designed as rentable shops beneath an aristocrat's home.
Minutes on foot from the castle gate, the Church of the Holy Rude and Argyll's Lodging, a natural pause on an Old Town walk.
Castle Wynd / St John Street, Old Town, Stirling
No. Make the castle your priority, then walk down via Castle Wynd and you will pass it anyway on the way to Argyll's Lodging or the town centre; pause a few minutes for photos and give it no separate slot in your day.
Not in any meaningful sense; there is no house behind the facade, and everything worth seeing is the east wall from the pavement. For the interior of a townhouse of the same era, go next door to Argyll's Lodging, which runs ticketed guided tours.