Angus Burns enthusiasts have suffered a funding blow in their project to create an £18,000 memorial to the Bard near Montrose.
Montrose Burns Club is leading the heritage project to protect a historic plaque near Hillside.
It marks the spot Robert Burns stopped at in 1787 during the trip to visit relatives and places of his ancestry in Angus and the Mearns.
The plaque and its story was largely ignored for almost 80 years.
But it is being incorporated in a new memorial cairn after its crumbling location in a dry stone dyke was threatened by tree roots and storm damage.
However, the initiative now faces a five-figure funding gap.
It comes after both the Heritage Lottery Fund and Historic Environment Scotland knocked back funding bids.
Little known story
The original plaque was placed in the Hillside wall in 1930.
But it was almost eight decades on that its story – and a connection to Angus ‘outsider artist’ Adam Christie – was unearthed.
Christie sculpted the plaque during his time at the then Sunnyside asylum.
The Shetlander spent much of his life in the Angus institution, carving sculptures with basic tools like a nail or piece of glass.
Christie died in 1950 and was buried in a pauper’s grave in Sleepyhillock cemetery, Montrose.
It was during Scotland’s Year of Homecoming in 2009 that the full story behind the discovery emerged.
Mearns Heritage expert and Burns enthusiast Dave Ramsay has pieced together much of the tale.
The bodies considered the applications over a number of months.
He said updates and photographic evidence of the project’s progress were lodged to support the original submissions.
There is no right of appeal to the funding rejections.
“I am completely baffled by these two decisions,” Dave said.
“In 23 years of initiating, managing and developing community heritage projects, I have never come across such a blatant denial of our historic and cultural heritage associated with Robert Burns and Adam Christie.
“It is all the more ironic that I submitted two successful submissions to Historic Environment Scotland, who awarded two cast bronze plaques to Adam Christie.
“Those are now in Sleepyhillock cemetery and his birthplace in Aith, Shetland.”
More than £8,000 has been raised by Montrose Burns Club so far.
Christie sculptures
The club endured another knockback after it stepped in to safeguard 11 Christie sculptures which came up for auction in Montrose.
But a bid for cash support for that purchase has also been rejected.
Some of the stone heads are due to go on display in a new Montrose museum exhibition this week.
The World President of the Robert Burns Federation and Scotland’s Lord Lyon were among those to back the funding bids.
“It makes you wonder what else needs to be done to penetrate the barriers of the Heritage Lottery Fund and Historic Environment Scotland to prove a case for supportive funding,” said Dave.
Project co-ordinator Dave Clark, past-president of Montrose Burns Club, said, “MBC is grateful to all who have provided support, by way of endorsement and by financial donations.
“They all should be congratulated for seeing the worth in protecting this important Burns artefact for the future.
“It is very disappointing that the two organisations which exist to provide financial support to heritage projects failed to support our applications for funding.
“I personally thought we could bank on the Heritage Lottery fund and Historic Environment Scotland – but sadly this was not the case.
“Moving forward, the £10,000 shortfall for this project must be filled and our club is actively exploring other avenues to meet the deficit.”
These included a Justgiving link which can be accessed through the Montrose Burns Club Facebook page.
