Richard Scott on balancing conservation and commerce

The rain pours down on Drumlanrig Castle, as the wind howls across the Dumfriesshire hills in the south of Scotland. A door bangs in the distance and the fire spits, as Richard Scott, the 10th Duke of Buccleuch, strides into the morning room, relieved to be home after a long day. “A glass of wine? Red? White?” He potters off downstairs to fetch two glasses. On his return, he sinks into a sofa, loosening his tie. “It’s good to be back.”

The duke, fetching his own wine, is far from the lord in his manor. The largest private landowner in Britain, with 240,000 acres, his family possesses three significant piles — this, the 120-room Drumlanrig Castle near Dumfries, a pink sandstone Renaissance masterpiece nestled in the Nith valley; Bowhill, a rambling Georgian mansion in the heart of the nearby Ettrick forest; and Boughton House in Northamptonshire, central England, a palace inspired in part by Versailles. This haul is the result of a triple union between the Douglas family of Drumlanrig, the Scotts of Bowhill and the Montagus of Boughton. Together, they produced two dukedoms — of Buccleuch and of Queensberry — both dating from the late 17th century.

The family also owns Dalkeith Palace near Edinburgh, the 75,000-acre Eskdale and Liddesdale estate, a collection of more than 850 smaller properties spread around the rest of the UK, and the parent company, Buccleuch, run by chief executive John Glen.

Buccleuch comprises five main pillars: estates; energy; tourism and hospitality; property and rural businesses, including a dog food brand, Buccleuch beef; and a tree nursery. Unsurprisingly, property is the main commercial engine, with a market value of approximately £250m, and investments that range from a 25,000 sq ft shopping centre in Ely, Cambridgeshire, in eastern England, to a 172,000 sq ft 13-unit industrial estate five miles from Glasgow. And that is not counting the additional 12,000 homes. The size and nature of his portfolio mean the duke is constantly on the move between estate offices. “I am a nomad with some very substantial tents,” he says. “I would never say I have a favourite house. I am deeply happy in any of them.”

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Drumlanrig, its walls hung with ceremonial swords and Renaissance portraits, could be mistaken for a museum. But next to a large chest labelled “Napoleon’s dispatch box” are bookcases full of Christie’s auction catalogues, topped with half-burnt candles and family photographs — monuments of a home well loved.

Richard Walter John Montagu Douglas Scott, the 10th Duke of Buccleuch and 12th Duke of Queensberry KBE DL was born in Edinburgh in 1954, to John, Earl of Dalkeith (later the ninth and 11th dukes respectively) and his wife, model Jane McNeill. Educated first at Eton College — “a non-event”, Scott says now — he read history at Christ Church, Oxford, where, like his father, he was a member of the Bullingdon Club, the notorious all-male dining group. “You couldn’t not be; everyone was.” Background aside, he was an unlikely member. “I’m not a particularly clubby person. Probably not too good in all-male company.” Later, he describes himself as “boring”. This seems impossible. “I definitely was, I can tell you.”

As a young man, Scott was not fazed by his inheritance. “I loved the art context that we lived in from an early age. The prospect of having an engagement with it all for the rest of my life was a plus rather than a worry.” He attributes any indifference to his responsibilities to being a late developer. “I didn’t think to challenge it. Probably I should have been more troubled than I was.”

In 1981, as the Earl of Dalkeith, he married Lady Elizabeth Kerr, a former journalist and daughter of the 12th Marquess of Lothian. They have four children: Louisa; Walter, the Earl of Dalkeith and Scott’s heir; Charles; and Amabel. An opera lover, Scott names a piano as his hypothetical desert island luxury. In his Land Rover a CD of the German composer Samuel Scheidt lies in wait. His greatest extravagance is commissioning land art: 11 miles from Drumlanrig, work is under way on an extension for Crawick Multiverse, an art project by American landscape designer Charles Jencks on the site of a former open cast mine. Indoors, Scott is consumed with the rehanging of Rembrandt’s “Old Woman Reading”, owned by the Montagu family since the 1760s. The process will be filmed for a documentary in collaboration with the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

The honour of being Britain’s largest private landowner is a loaded one. In Scotland, titled landowners come with baggage, a 200-year hangover from the Highland Clearances, in which tens of thousands of tenants lost their homes in the 18th and 19th centuries. Lately, a national interest in land has been revived, and in March 2016 a Scottish Land Reform Bill passed, with new obligations for estate owners. The duke is resigned to the inevitable conflict. “It is a cause that will always be fought, but the bad feeling seems to fall away when newer landowners move in.” These include Danish clothing magnate Anders Holch Povlsen, who owns an estimated 220,000 acres.

The restructuring of Scottish land is healthy, the duke says — indeed, he has begun to sell pockets of land. “The structure of farms has to alter if rural communities are to be healthy. For that to happen, an enormous amount of investment is needed, which many traditional landowners like ourselves don’t have.”

Without the income generated by Buccleuch at large, the rural estates and their cultural treasures would not survive. “The tourism alone will not fund the running of Drumlanrig,” Glen says. This year, Buccleuch will fail to break even, after making significant investments, that include £5m in renewable energy and £7.5m in Dalkeith Palace, where more than 40 new local jobs have been created. “To get to a stage where you’re able to fund the cash requirements without having to depend on the profits of [the] disposal of things . . . we’re not there yet.”

Working for a family business such as Buccleuch — on whose board sit close relations, including the duke’s eldest son Walter — presents Glen with a unique challenge. “My job is to say, ‘here are some options’. It’s not my money; it’s theirs.” The land, maligned though its ownership might be in Scotland, is not an asset for which decisions can be made in isolation. “This is not about turning a quick buck, but about leaving a legacy,” he adds. “A lot of people depend on the choices we make, whether they’re tenant farmers or beaters on a grouse moor.”

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The future of agriculture following last year’s decision by the UK to leave the EU remains uncertain, and dominates Glen’s concerns. “We haven’t had a conversation with the UK taxpayer for 40 years as to what they would like us to do with their money in the countryside,” he says. The question is, “what would the nation like us to provide and in exchange for what — do they want me to produce energy, food, forestry? What do they want?”

A passionate Remainer, the duke was troubled by the referendum result, and the focus on immigration. “I appreciate that I am privileged and don’t realise what it’s like to be in parts of the country where there are challenges with schooling and housing because local authorities are being swamped,” he says. “Nevertheless, it’s impossible to be in London and not feel the vigour and energy which the wonderful mix of people brings. It will be deeply sad if we become parochial and try and put up barriers, and impoverishing in the long run.” He likes Ruth Davidson, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives: “She’s a formidable politician with just the right attitude. They are very lucky to have her.”

President of the Georgian Group, the national charity for the protection of Georgian buildings, the duke was in charge of the roving microphone at one of its recent meetings. A friend remarks how “ungrand” he is. Etiquette dictates that dukes should be addressed as “Your Grace”. He won’t have it. “‘Your Grace’ is just absurd. I don’t think anyone calls me that, and if they did I’d look around to see who they were talking to.” The aristocracy is irrelevant. “We’re all human beings. I’m a very lucky one. Some people have this history associated with them, but it doesn’t make you important. The people who are important are the nurses, the schoolteachers.”

And we all worry, he adds. Even when you’re worth £207m — as he is, according to the Sunday Times Rich List. “We all have panics — ‘I’m no good at this,’ or ‘I’m going to make a fool of myself’. We’re all vulnerable. We get more vulnerable as we get older. We start to worry about all sorts of things, not least our demise. That’s the ultimate leveller.”

Buccleuch by numbers

Boughton House
11,000 acres, owned by the Montagu branch of the family since 1528.

Bowhill
61,000 acres, bought in 1747 by the second Duke of Buccleuch for his son Lord Charles Scott.

Eskdale and Liddesdale
75,000 acres stretching from the English border to Hawick, running almost continuously along the Eskdale, Liddesdale and Ewes valleys. The former site of the Langholm Lodge before its demolition during the second world war.

Dalkeith Palace
Sold by the Douglas family to Francis Scott, second Earl of Buccleuch in 1642, and now let to the University of Wisconsin. Parkland comprises 2,250 acres with 600 acres of woodland five miles from Edinburgh city centre.

Queensberry estate
90,000 acres and home to Drumlanrig Castle, one of the most important Renaissance buildings in Scotland, built between 1679 and 1691 on the site of an old Douglas family stronghold.