THE CHAIRMAN of one of the charitable trusts set up by Andrew Carnegie has insisted the public will still be able to see a valuable stained glass window commissioned by the Scots-born philanthropist.

Angus Hogg, of the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust, yesterday said they planned to organise regular tours of the trust’s new HQ in Dunfermline where the Tiffany window is housed.

The window, which could be worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, was at the centre of a row over ownership, with local campaigners arguing that it belonged to the people of Dunfermline.

However, it emerged the work of art did in fact belong to the charitable trust, and it was duly installed in its £2.9 million HQ, which was opened by the Princess Royal in February.

Those campaigning to have the stained glass window returned to the Carnegie Hall, or installed as the centrepiece of a new museum, feared public access to Andrew Carnegie House would be all but impossible.

Those fears were raised yet again by a group of students at Telford College in Edinburgh, who hoped to visit the trust’s HQ.

Margie Dobson, one of those on a decorative glass course, said they tried for six weeks to arrange a visit without success.

“What really bugged us was that we got in touch with them about six weeks ago and they only had the decency to respond the day before we hoped to visit,” Mrs Dobson said.

“We were going to Alloa yesterday to visit our glass supplier and hoped to see the Tiffany window on the way back.”

Mr Hogg said the trust had no plans to deny anyone access to the window.

“There’s absolutely no problem about the college coming here. It is just a question of when we can fit them in,” he said yesterday.

He said the trust had just held a trial visit involving the Inner Wheel Club of Dunfermline.

Tiffany expert Jim Mitchinson gave a talk about the window and the Louis Comfort studios.

“It was hugely successful,” Mr Hogg said.

He said the plan was to train up one of the guides at the Andrew Carnegie Birthplace Museum to conduct tours of the new trust building and the window.

“We are still in a kind of catch-up mode, but our intention is to respond to Telford and say to them ‘you can come and see the window’,” he said.

“There is no problem with them coming. We just need to get the whole thing into position.”

The trust has yet to decide how best to organise the visits, but is considering organising monthly tours for the public.

“One of the beauties of where the window is, is that now they can actually see both sides of it,” he said.

“The window is made of layered glass and is five layers thick in places.

“They can actually go round to the other side of the window and see how the layering and the lighting works.

“You really get a unique experience of how the whole thing is constructed.”

Mrs Dobson said it was a pity the trust hadn’t got their act together to respond to the students, and added she hoped the visits wouldn’t simply be organised to suit the trust.

She still hopes to see the window, which is one of only two examples of its kind in Scotland and five in the UK.

Carnegie commissioned the window from Louis Comfort’s New York studio in the early 1900s.

While Fife Council never had the window valued, a Tiffany lamp sold at auction for $250,000.