Earl snubbed in £18m will prepares for attic sale of the century
Keeping up the 189- room Dunrobin Castle is a daunting challenge — especially if you’ve been left out of your mother’s £18 million will, as happened to the earl of Sutherland last year.
But, far from feeling sorry for himself, the 74-year-old earl is taking what he describes as a ‘pragmatic approach’ to the Castle’s upkeep.
So today he bids farewell to a treasury of family heirlooms, most of which have never come on the market before — a duchess’s coronet among them — as they go under the hammer at auctioneers Bonhams in edinburgh in what’s destined to be the ‘attic sale’ of the century.
‘it will, i hope, generate funds to ensure the castle’s preservation,’ says Alistair Sutherland, the 25th earl, who, as i disclosed last September, went unmentioned in the will which his mother, elizabeth, drew up three days before her death aged 98.
instead, she bequeathed £3.5 million to her only daughter, Lady Annabel Bainton, and £250,000 to Alistair’s twin brother, Martin.
‘They are a very well advised family,’ a fellow aristocrat told me. ‘i’m sure that lots will have been handed over during her lifetime.’
Today’s auction, which is expected to yield up to £400,000 for Dunrobin’s coffers, includes a portrait of the Duke of Brunswick, estimated to sell for £12,000, as well as some of the family silver, including a pair of george iii candlesticks, and dozens of tablespoons and forks.
For those with slightly more modern tastes, there are a pair of Victorian ‘bomb’ silver cigar lighters, made by garrard, with an estimate of £200-£300.
‘Much of it has not really seen the light of day for years,’ Dunrobin’s managing director, Scott Morrison, tells me. ‘We just don’t have the capacity to display everything.’
Among the 416 lots — uncovered not only in Dunrobin’s attic but also in its cellars — are everything from tiger skins to elk antlers, from pewter ice cream moulds to chamber pots, one of which might have been used by a very eminent visitor — namely Queen Victoria.