An Ayrshire countryside estate which champions heritage crafts has been put firmly on the map as it received prime-time telly viewing last week.
A spotlight was put on Cumnock’s Dumfries House last Wednesday as the country estate — owned by King Charles III — featured on BBC’s The Repair Shop, which sees expert craftsmen restore heirlooms and treasured antiques, giving them a new lease of life.
The repair team were invited to meet King Charles, then Prince of Wales before his accession to the throne, on the estate and restore two unique items — an 18th century bracket clock and a Wemyss Ware ceramic vase, made for Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee.
The team of furniture restorers Jay Blades, Will Kirk, ceramics restorer Kirsten Ramsay, and horologist Steve Fletcher also met and worked with some of the students and graduates on The Prince’s Foundation’s building craft programme — a training initiative that teaches traditional skills such as blacksmithing, stonemasonry and wood carving.
Dumfries House’s collections manager Satinder Kaur, who lives in New Cumnock, helped to select the items for restoring, provided background history to the cast and crew, and even got to drive the objects down to the repair barn.
She is in charge of around 1,000 objects of artwork, clocks, furniture and ceramics on the estate, including 59 pieces of Chippendale furniture — roughly 10 per cent of the overall known Chippendale furniture in the world.
Satinder said: “It was nerve-wracking but it was also really fun to spend time with each of the experts and spend time in their area of expertise.
“The experts weren’t particularly nervous meeting the King — or the Prince as he was then — but I think it was really exciting for them to be in Dumfries House and see what we have and to realise what we do here.
“The collection for me is the focus but when they saw the estate and the wider education programmes, and the fact that we push this craft work, I think it really did blow them away at the scale of Dumfries House and the estate.
“I think the whole experience was educating on both sides.
“I’m very lucky that we get to do these kind of things.”
Satinder, originally from Irvine, said picking the objects to be restored was of importance as they wanted items which were original to the house and also had meaning to King Charles III, the president of the foundation.
“The fact that we chose Wemyss Ware and it’s a Scottish pottery was really important to us,” Satinder said.
“The finished vase took your breath away because there’s such a difference.
“And the clock that we chose was one of the original clocks of the house. The case was a real improvement with what Will did but it was the mechanism and the fact it was singing and chiming was really special to have that.”
Since airing, Satinder says the show has put Dumfries House firmly on the map for visitors.
She said: “Dumfries House is a wee bit isolated, out in the East Ayrshire countryside, and some people really do go out of their way to visit us — and the past couple of days has really proven that.
“We had a family of four come up from Yorkshire after seeing the show. I walked passed them and they said ‘we saw you on the TV!’
“I’m not used to that, but for them to come out of their way at the end of their October break to Dumfries House is really big for us.
“The phones really have been non stop; the tours for the past few days have been sold out.
“The interest that has come from this has been amazing.”
•The Repair Shop ‘A Royal Visit’ episode is available to watch on catch up on BBC iPlayer.
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