Dundee - A Repair for a Scottish Football Legend

In this episode, the experts lend their skills to a community project, hear the story behind a new treasure to be repaired, and visit a local crafting hero.

Dom and Lucia are in Dundee, where regeneration of the waterfront has sparked change throughout the city. However, in the shadow of the celebrated RSS Discovery, Britain's oldest wooden ship, HMS Unicorn, is moored around the corner and a little neglected. Beloved by many, especially the generations of the Women's Royal Naval Service who trained on it, the 200-year-old vessel is in need of immediate preservation. However, getting it into drydock is a costly operation, so the team are visiting to help with their fundraising efforts. In the past, a fibreglass copy of the unicorn figurehead went on tour to raise awareness of the project, but since it was damaged a decade ago, it has been unable to perform those duties. Despite some recent health troubles, heraldic sculptor Peter is eager to repair the figurehead so that it can go out on its fundraising excursions once again.

It's all to play for when Dom picks up a Scotland Schoolboys football cap that holds immense significance for Amanda. It was awarded to her husband Frank, who became a legend at local club Dundee United, playing there for a decade. But after retirement, Frank suffered from vascular dementia, and he would cradle the cap often, a reminder of earlier days. Now the gold brocade is tarnished, and the purple fabric faded, so master hatter Jayesh Vaghela has his work cut out to restore it to how it looked when Frank first held it all those years ago.

Lucia trained at the V&A in London, but this is her chance to visit to the Dundee branch of the celebrated art and design museum. She is there to learn about their restoration of a lost Charles Rennie Mackintosh-designed interior. Originally in Miss Cranston's Ingram Street Tearooms in
Glasgow, the interior was painstakingly moved and rebuilt in Dundee. Bringing a work like this out of storage and back to the public is a conservator's dream, and Lucia can't wait to hear all about it.