Charity shop £20 purchase believed to be ‘priceless’ Robert the Bruce glasswork

The Scotsman

Antique dealers Richard Drummond and his son Alfie who believe they have discovered a a stained glass window with connections to Robert the Bruce. An antique dealer has found what he claims is a 'priceless' stained glass window - that belonged to Robert The Bruce. Richard Drummond came across the colourful glass in a local shop in Moffat in Scotland and was told it had been discovered in an old police station and abandoned for years.He paid and bought it and took it home, where he began cleaning years of grease to reveal the stunning stained glass underneath.It showed a depiction of a knight on a horse - with a Latin inscription around the edges, which Richard roughly translated into 'Robert Bruce, King of the Scots."

Transcript

00:00My name's Richard Drummond. I'm from Moffat. I'm Alfie Drummond. I'm also from Moffat.

00:10We're a father and son antique and vintage dealers and we have what we believe could

00:17be stained glass pertaining to Robert the Bruce. I found that basically in a charity

00:23shop where it was lifted from a bin. It was covered in dirt, dust. Once my research was

00:31done it then went into the garden shed where it's lived for approximately a year,

00:37year and a half. Me and my dad went up to Edinburgh for a few days, took the bit of stained glass

00:44there with an expert look at it. He told us it could possibly date to when Robert the Bruce

00:51was alive and be in a turret in his castle. But for something of this age, we believe

01:00it's in fantastic condition and could be of national significance to Scotland. We are

01:06called the Crap Shack, which actually stands for Curios, Retro, Antiques and Props. We hunt

01:12here, there and everywhere. Charity shops, flea markets, we have people dropping things off.

01:20But luckily enough we did find this local and as far as we know it was donated to a charity

01:27shop but the state it was in it went straight to the bin until someone lifted it out of the

01:32bin to have a closer look. Once I took the first layer of dirt off I did contact the local

01:40museum curator who came and basically looked and verified my thoughts that it is very old.

01:46But this is, like I say, this is where we need, we need more historians, we need more experts,

01:51we need, we need the glass tested to find out definite dates. I mean, let's get this piece

01:57where it needs to be. Let's get its story told. Let's find out how much it's worth for us.

02:03We basically paid £20 for it. We have been offered up to five figures so far for it but it could be six

02:14figures, seven figures, we really don't know. We've told the charity shop at the top of the street that

02:18anything that this makes they will get a percentage off to keep the community running. Until we've got it properly

02:25authenticated and finished any canal analysis and we've got that final result, I don't think I'll sleep.

02:35Luckily enough it is going to Dr Helen Spencer, hopefully the leading Scottish expert on this

02:41and then hopefully we'll take it from there and find out more in due course.

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