Bruce enthusiasts plan heritage centre for 'neglected' king

Published on Saturday 30 January 2010 19:09

A MULTI-MILLION-POUND visitor attraction is planned to celebrate the life of Robert the Bruce, Scotland's "neglected" king.

Supporters of the 14th-century monarch are to commission a study into creating a heritage centre in Dumfries and Galloway.

They claim that while William Wallace and Robert Burns have been given iconic status with their own museums, Bruce has been relatively poorly served, despite being a pivotal figure in Scottish history.

It is hoped that the centre would be based in Dumfries, where in 1306 Bruce killed his cousin, John Comyn, known as the Red Comyn, his greatest rival for the Scottish throne, which led to the re-establishment of an independent Scottish monarchy.

Doug Archibald of the Bruce Trust said: "We are in the process of looking at the financing of a feasibility study on the creation of a visitor centre."

He said that the centre would encompass all the individuals involved in Bruce's life at the time of the murder and give a run-down of his life and career. A study into establishing a heritage centre about the king was carried out by the local authority in 1999 but nothing materialised.

Although plans are at a very early stage, the trust foresees the project costing several million pounds. However, Archibald insists that the trust was capable of taking it in its stride. "This is our main goal and it is a major task. Personally, I think it's a crying shame that there is nothing like this in Scotland.

"There's a great deal made of William Wallace, and there's no question that Wallace was a great man. But at the end of the day he lost his head, whereas Bruce has been very much forgotten and he is the man that created the split between Scotland and England in terms of geographical boundaries."

Dr Michael Penman, senior lecturer in history at Stirling University and currently working on a full-length study of Robert the Bruce, agreed with the trust's contention to a degree: "It's certainly the case that he's been overlooked in preference to Burns and Wallace, but he's number three in the pantheon, which is not bad, so I don't think we could claim he's been unfairly neglected."

Penman said this was down to Burns and Wallace being seen as 'everyman figures', while Bruce was still perceived to a certain extent as the "shifty aristo, who takes a good while to come round to being patriotic and modernised. It's very much a modern judgment on him."

He also said that Bruce tends to suffer when judged in the light of the "legendary Wallace". "They both have been romanticised, but Wallace more so because he's a blank canvas while we know more about Bruce."

Adam Bruce, the son of the 11th Earl of Elgin, a direct descendant of Robert the Bruce, believed that it was the right time to create a centre for the king.

"I think it's a great idea," he said. "At the time of the 700th anniversary of the king's enthronement in 2006, there were a number of organisations looking at how to capture what is happening over the next 20 years around the various anniversaries leading up to 2014 and the 700th anniversary of Bannockburn, so the Bruce Trust's work has come along at just the right time."