Tolbooth Entrance, Jail Wynd

 The coffin of Allan Mair - eighty four years old when he achieved the odd distinction of being the last man hanged in Stirling - was found in a cheap pine coffin, a tea chest, beneath the Tolbooth Theatre pend during renovations in 2000 – along with that of ‘Scatters’ a poacher, who claimed that his grandmother, a witch from Denny, had placed a magic spell upon him – promising that he could only die with his boots on. On the day he was to be hanged, he marched boldly to the gallows erected by the Mercat Cross in Broad Street, unbuttoned his boots, and threw them into the crowd...sure that this would guarantee his survival. As his burial here proves... it didn’t.

Find out more about the Tolbooth at http://tolbooth.stirling.gov.uk