It was Robert the Bruce’s dying wish - and now it has been honoured some 700 years later by a group of ordinary men with an extraordinary plan.
Details of the journey that took Robert I’s ‘heart’ to the Holy Land have emerged in a new book, with the very modern pilgrimage starting in an old railway station building in Renton in West Dunbartonshire and ending in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
For more than 15 years, the Strathleven Artizans have planned to get the heart to the Holy Land with a wooden replica - carved from the Bruce Oak - taken to Jerusalem in a very modern pilgrimage.
Details of the journey that took Robert I’s ‘heart’ to the Holy Land have emerged in a new book, with the very modern pilgrimage starting in an old railway station building in Renton in West Dunbartonshire and ending in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
For more than 15 years, the Strathleven Artizans have planned to get the heart to the Holy Land with a wooden replica - carved from the Bruce Oak - taken to Jerusalem in a very modern pilgrimage.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Robert the Bruce is important to us because he lived and died in Renton.
00:05You can read in the books that he died in Carderis but this is the parish of Carderis
00:09and it's Renton that he lived and died.
00:11He asked his knights on his deathbed to take his heart to the Holy Land
00:17which was done when he died.
00:19His heart was removed from his body, embalmed and put into a silver casket
00:23in which James Douglas put round his neck and never took it off for a year.
00:29The group thought it was important to take Robert the Bruce's heart to Jerusalem
00:34because that was his last wish.
00:37It didn't make it to Jerusalem, it made it to the south of Spain
00:40and then was returned home again and buried in Melrose.
00:43So as a group promoting Robert the Bruce we thought it would be good
00:47to take the heart to Jerusalem and put it in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre
00:53and say prayers for his soul.
00:55We were not allowed to take the real heart so one of the artisans, Arthur Murdoch
01:00crafted a wooden heart from the Bruce oak tree which King Robert the Bruce
01:05planted 700 years ago in Weown.
01:08We took that heart to Jerusalem, Simon Collins took that heart to Jerusalem
01:1318 months ago, placed it in the Holy Sepulchre, said prayers for the soul
01:18of Robert the Bruce and returned it back to Scotland.
01:22We've since done a tour of Scotland and we've written a book.
01:26The King Robert the Bruce Heritage Centre is here in Adopta Station in Renton.
01:31It's an old railway station that we got to adopt and we opened up a museum
01:35solely to promote King Robert the Bruce, loving and dying in the area.
01:40We go to schools, we go to colleges, we go and do pipe band championships,
01:45Highland Games, we'll go anywhere that anybody wants us and we'll promote.
01:49We have an exhibition trailer and van with all the weapons and all that stuff.
01:53A bit of re-enactment, storytelling and anything that we can do to help
01:58to promote Robert the Bruce.