Queen's Road / Victoria Place

Leaving Kings Knot by the main gate, cross Dumbarton Road at Albert Place and proceed along Queens Road towards the Kings Park. Notice the attractive suburb of Victorian villas to your left. These houses were mainly constructed in the 19th century, when rapid improvements in urban infrastructure and increased transport links between Stirling, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Perth took place. This led to a number of wealthy people moving out of big cities such as Glasgow or Edinburgh to settle in places like Stirling, possibly looking for cleaner air and greater proximity to the countryside.

Notice Stirling Golf Club on the right. Golf has been a popular game in Scotland since at least the fourteenth century, when parliament forbade Sunday golf as it was a distraction from archery practice. All Scotland's 16th-century monarchs played golf, and it was being played in the King's Park by the early 17th century.

Stirling Golf clubhouse has occupied this current site since the early 1960s. An earlier clubhouse was previously located further along Victoria Place, facing the Kings Park. Stirling Golf Club's origins appear to date from 1869, when a 7-hole course for 72 "local gentlemen" was established in Kings Park. It was extended to 9 holes in 1877 and to 18 holes in 1912. A Ladies Club was formed around 1900, and by 1901 it had 72 members.

Mrs Irvine Robertson is pictured "driving off from the first tee opposite the clubhouse in Victoria Place" in July 1912. It appears "this was the first occasion when the women of Stirling Ladies Golf Club were able to play on the full course except for Saturday afternoons and summer evenings unless playing in a mixed foursome."