Q 01/05

What did the Lanercost Chronicle say William Wallace had made from an English treasurer's skin after Stirling Bridge?

A) A drumhead

B) A sword belt

C) A saddle cover

D) A book binding

Answer · why

B) A sword belt

A sword belt, or baldrick, was cut from a strip of skin running from head to heel, the chronicler wrote. Other accounts say the Scots simply shared th...

Q 02/05

Which Oscar-winning film stages the Battle of Stirling Bridge on an open field with no river crossing in sight?

A) Rob Roy

B) Outlaw King

C) Braveheart

D) Highlander

Answer · why

C) Braveheart

Braveheart left the bridge out because filming around one proved too awkward. The film still won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

Q 03/05

By the chronicler Guisborough's account, how many horsemen could barely cross Stirling Bridge side by side?

A) Two

B) Six

C) Twenty

D) Sixty

Answer · why

A) Two

Two riders abreast was the limit, so the whole army would have needed most of the day to file across while the Scots watched from the high ground.

Q 04/05

According to the chronicler Guisborough, why were the first English troops over Stirling Bridge called back at dawn?

A) A truce had been announced

B) Fog covered the causeway

C) Their commander overslept

D) The river was rising

Answer · why

C) Their commander overslept

Their commander overslept, the chronicler claims, so the men who had crossed at first light had to march back. Historians doubt the tale and suspect i...

Q 05/05

A much-vandalised statue of Wallace, once sited near the Stirling Bridge battlefield, bore which actor's face?

A) Sean Connery

B) Liam Neeson

C) Ewan McGregor

D) Mel Gibson

Answer · why

D) Mel Gibson

Mel Gibson's face, from his 1995 film role, looked out over the car park below the Wallace Monument until 2008. The statue was so disliked that it had...