Duke of Buccleuch dies at 83

The Duke of Buccleuch, Scotland’s largest private landowner, has died at the age of 83. The Duke – often referred to as Scotland’s Duke of Westminster because of his vast property estate – died yesterday at one of his three Scottish homes, Bowhill, near Selkirk, after a short illness. In Estates Gazette’s most recent Rich List, the Duke was estimated to have a personal wealth of £75m. Buccleuch Estates, his property company, is selling off smaller assets in a drive to build a £500m portfolio of larger assets. Its subsidiary, Buccleuch Property, has a £250m portfolio. Buccleuch Estates’ 2004 accounts reported a £6.5m profit on £29m sales, with net assets rising to nearly £61m. Born in 1923 as Walter Francis John Montagu Douglas Scott, the Duke was educated at Eton before joining the Royal Navy in 1942. After the war he studied agriculture and forestry at Oxford, and became director of Buccleuch Estates in 1949, representing Edinburgh North as Conservative MP between 1960 and 1973. He was paralysed in 1971 after an accident falling from his horse, and spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair. On the death of his father in 1973 he became the Duke of Buccleuch. After the Lords reform in 1999, he declined to stand as a hereditary peer. The Buccleuch Group manages five estates with 280,000 acres in the Scottish Borders and in Northamptonshire. It contains more than 1,000 properties, 200 farms and four mansion houses:Bowhill, Drumlanrig Castle in south-west Scotland, Dalkeith Palace near Edinburgh, and Boughton in Northampton. The Duke’s funeral will be held at Melrose Abbey on Tuesday. The Earl of Dalkeith succeeds his father to the Dukedom. helen.roxburgh@rbi.co.uk