New heights for the tower

old tower, during her tour of Clackmannanshire. One was the Earl of Mar and Kellie - it was the Erskines' family seat for generations - the second was Colin Kerr, the National Trust for Scotland's Custodian at the tower.

''It was a great responsibility,

giving the Queen a picture of the tower,'' Kerr says, but as the man who possibly knows more about the tower's complicated past than anyone else, he could be confident the Queen would enjoy seeing the restoration, and hearing some of the long history.

''But you could say we have a double celebration here this year,'' Kerr adds. ''The original tower was completed in 1497, so it is our 500th anniversary in August . . . though there were certainly earlier defensive buildings in the area. These towers are part of the landscape around here.''

The tower was built in four stages and took around 100 years to complete, a solid near-impregnable structure. Later, in the early eighteenth century, the 6th Earl of Mar - the first Secretary of State for Scotland - returned from the Grand Tour of Europe in love with all things Italian and French, and created the

present Italian staircase, a suspended, domed ceiling, and a musicians' gallery. By this time there was already a seventeenth-century mansion attached to the tower, and he planned lavish conversions to turn it into a Baroque palace, eventually completed by his successor, with gardens which became among the most famous in Scotland.

Kerr is adept at giving all this complicated information without confusing his listeners. He is a natural historian, who soaks up the atmosphere and the sense of things that have happened in an ancient building. Yet his background is farming. For generations his family had farmed at Little France, just below Craigmillar Castle in Edinburgh. Today, on the way south out of the city, the A68 here is lined with dozens of houses and it is hard to realise that it was ever farmland. ''I don't like passing it,'' he says, ''but then, that's how history goes.''

It was the neighbouring Craigmillar Farm, below the castle, which gave Kerr his first taste of history. It was in the charge of the then Minister of Public Works - today, through many name changes, Historic Scotland. When problems of vandalism arose at the castle, the Ministry asked the young lad to keep an eye on it in the evenings. ''I didn't get paid for it then,'' Kerr says, ''but I got an allowance for my dog!'' When the Ministry later offered him the custodianship of Craigmillar Castle, he had found his career.

But though he spent eight years in Orkney, latterly to look after the Bishop's and Earl's Palace in Kirkwall, it was oil that first took him to these northern islands. At the

start there, Kerr worked with Orcadians in the oil-related industry on the isle of Flotta before he returned to his first love. Later, he moved to Arbroath Abbey and then Stirling Castle.

By this time, Kerr was Regional Custodian for Central Scotland and Argyll, with 20 monuments in his care, and became a well-known and popular figure at Stirling Castle for the way he can make a building come alive. He believes that Scottish history is a continual learning process. ''I just use my own language,'' he says, ''and bring it alive that way.''

But Historic Scotland's retirement age was 60 and, as it drew nearer, Kerr decided to move. A year ago he took early retirement and changed to the National Trust for Scotland and Alloa Tower. ''I actually left Historic Scotland on May 31, and on June 1, 1996, started at Alloa Tower.....during those first few months, more as a Clerk of Works.''

The tower had always had close connections with royalty, from the era when the barons and lords were eager to have a rural stronghold that was, nevertheless, close to the Court at Stirling Castle. The Earl of Mar and Kellie is still Hereditary Keeper of Stirling Castle. It was long used as the Erskines' family home. At one time, the local workers achieved the incredible task of boring through the 11ft thick walls on the third ''solar'' floor. Its name comes from the fact that, above the tree-line, it makes the most of the light. They line the aperture's walls with stone seating. Covered in rugs and cushions, it was a comfortable place for the family to gather. Today there are all round views, reaching to the Ochils in the north.

Even earlier, Mary Queen of Scots is said to have been reconciled to Darnley here, Kerr explains, ''and she came to Alloa to recover from the birth of the future James VI.'' He is delighted that the young prince's cradle and his high chair were returning to Alloa Tower before the royal visit. One legend that visitors love is that, while Mary was visiting Alloa, her infant son died and, to preserve the line, an infant of the Earl of Mar was substituted. ''Obviously, we can't say it's true,'' Kerr says, ''but it's an interesting theory!''

On her visit the Queen saw the tower as it was from the early eighteenth century, after the 6th

Earl's alterations. The first floor holds the Grand Hall - now becoming a popular place for concerts and recitals, and other functions. Above is the Charter Room, where the Erskines carried on their vast business enterprises.

By the eighteenth century, the Erskines had grown prosperous. The family founded coal-mining in the area, and also mined silver for a period. It all turned Alloa into one of the busiest ports on the east coast, which once exported one third of Scotland's coal production. Port and coal-mining may now have ceased, but one industry that still flourishes is glass-blowing, introduced by a Countess of Mar, who invited European glass-blowers to come in. Today, United Glass is still one of the major employers in the area.

In addition to the 500th anniversary, Kerr is also puzzling whether this month may not hold another, rather curious ''anniversary''. On the first floor, the interest of writers is always aroused by the sight of a painting by David Allan of the fine old mansion. But is it a coincidence, he wonders, that, last year, in the first week of August both visitors and staff began to notice a ''strong smell of burning'' which seemed to lie somewhere between the ground floor reception desk and what had been the old kitchen. The space was reputed to have held a doorway to the mansion house.

Very worried, Colin and his colleagues began to search - it could, after all, have been a leftover from the mass of materials used during the recent restoration. But nothing was found and he is wondering if it could be something more supernatural!

For the beautiful mansion house burned down in a terrible fire in August 1800, which could have destroyed the tower too, if staff and outside workers had not quickly piled great heaps of wet turf against the door and wall, keeping it moist against the terrible heat. The tower was saved. ''But, last August, the smell of burning was there. I can't wait to see if it happens again,''

Kerr says. ''A memory of the past in the stones?''

Today, that picture, a few plans, and some unexpected stone blocks, are all that remain of the mansion house. A successor built in the

early 1900s was demolished in 1959, when the house and factories that now cluster close to the tower were built. Fortunately for visitors, the surrounding trees grow tall and beautiful, and usually allow more distant views only of the hills

and countryside.

The tower, Alloa's oldest building, had then lain derelict and locked since 1973 and many feared that the original roof and much of the fabric would not last much longer. Recognition of that fact and the determination to do something about it calls for praise for the Alloa Tower Building Preservation Trust (now the Clackmannan Heritage Trust) which initiated the recent restoration and still owns the tower, and for all the hard work that has gone into it. Alloa Tower is once again a fine example of the sort of the typical strongholds that occur all over Scotland.

''You could say the tower has been born again,'' Kerr says, ''and it's through the visitors, the tours, the concerts, and other functions that it will remain alive.''