The rise of Scotland’s new Lady LAIRDS!
Hard work and crazy hours, yes, but the ladies of the land thrive on it... that, EMMA COWING finds, and a meeting with Becks
LYING flat on a Highland moor, rifle expertly poised, the Laird of Attadale takes aim at a majestic stag in the distance. It is, although there was never any doubt, a clean kill. ‘Well done,’ cries the ghillie as the huge beast falls to the ground – and the Lady Laird (for it is indeed a she) allows herself a small, satisfied smile.
There is barely an inch of this vast, 30,000acre estate in Wester Ross that Joanna Macpherson does not know. Since taking over the running of Attadale – which boasts two Munros, a vast deer population and its very own train station – she has done her best to transform its fortunes and, as she puts it, ‘keep the show on the road’.
She spends her days roaming the land in green wellies, tweeds and a sensible Barbour hat, overseeing the annual deer cull, organising the local Highland Games and managing all the flotsam and jetsam it takes to keep a large estate above water in the 21st century.
No wonder then, that when a stalking party takes to the hill during deer-culling season, it is up to the Lady Laird to bag the first stag of the day. Such things must be kept in the most capable of hands, after all.
Macpherson is the sturdy, sensible type, her speech peppered with jolly hockey sticks language such as ‘oh golly’ and ‘soldiering on’. She is the sort of woman you could equally imagine striding across moorland in plus fours or acting as lady-in-waiting to a minor member of the Royal family in twinset and pearls. She is also the undisputed star of the forthcoming BBC Scotland series Lady Lairds, which examines the fates and fortunes of an increasingly common species on Scottish estates – the female landowner.
Macpherson is a former London advertising executive who took the reins from her parents at Attadale three years ago at the relatively advanced age of 57. She is under no illusions about the difficulty of her task. She says: ‘I have to say I’ve never worked so hard in my life. When you work in an office or for a company it’s nine to five – but here it’s 24/7, seven days a week. It’s pretty full on. But I’m not whingeing.
‘I dragged my poor London urban husband up here and the ambition is to try and keep it going for the next generation so the family can continue to enjoy it.’
There is, of course, the odd perk – from a close encounter with David Beckham during the shooting of a commercial to the occasional tipple on the job. Back at a Spartan hunting lodge mid-shoot, surrounded by men quaffing cans of beer and juice, she is the one who announces: ‘I think I might have a little bit of whisky’. Quite right too.
Attadale is not an ancestral estate. It was built in the 18th century by the Matheson family and sold to a German banker in 1910. Macpherson’s grandfather Ian, whose family originally hailed from Skye, bought the estate in 1952 after falling in love with the area – and Attadale House’s gleaming white turret.
Macpherson’s first memories of the place she would one day run are of long, languid childhood holidays, playing with ponies and splashing about in the loch.
‘My father was of the opinion you didn’t have to go abroad on holidays, you could go to a beach on Wester Ross and have a perfectly good holiday there, so that’s what we did,’ she says with just the slightest raised eyebrow. ‘We used to go riding on the hill ponies [originally used for deer stalking] and it’s near the beach so there was fishing and trying to catch trout. We were very happy.’
Her parents Ewan and Nicky took over the estate in the 1980s, running a holiday cottage business and managing the land. Her mother, an artist, transformed the gardens, adding sculptures, a Japanese garden, waterfalls and Monet bridges.
Attadale Gardens are now a
tourist attraction in their own right – providing much-needed income. The estate house saw brief fame in the mid-nineties when parts of BBC series Hamish Macbeth, starring Robert Carlyle, were filmed there.
Macpherson had been living in London when her parents approached her about taking up the reins. By then they were in their eighties and fresh blood was needed if Attadale was to stay in the family. It was an extraordinary proposition f or someone who worked in a London office and had only ever been to Scotland on holiday.
‘My father flagged it up as a prospect,’ she says. ‘He thought it would be a good idea and, luckily, my husband was prepared to consider it. He knew it was on the cards and was prepared to take it on, which was lucky, given the situation.’
Macpherson worked as an advertising director for a glossy gardening magazine and spent much of her time flying to the US on business and attending such society events as the Chelsea Flower Show. It was a busy life, but far from perfect. ‘It was a nasty, commercial, cut-throat business, but it was good preparation for learning a bit about gardening, which has been very helpful with the house,’ she says.
THe move also coincided with something of a professional slump. ‘If you’re a female with a career and… well, I mustn’t be ageist or sexist, but let’s just say it came at a good time.’ Moving from London to Strathcarron in 2012, Macpherson got stuck into the business of running the estate – following in the footsteps of her father by learning the land, getting to know the estate workers, inserting herself into the local community, managing the annual Highland Games and dreaming up schemes to bring in cash.
She now ensures venison from the annual deer cull is sold for meat and that the holiday cottages are promoted as much as possible. She is in the early stages of installing a hydro scheme, which she hopes will help boost the estate’s fortunes in the future. The burden of ancestral responsibility clearly lies heavy.
‘ I feel very, very responsible,’ she says, and pauses. ‘Mustn’t be emotional. Mustn’t be female. I do feel very responsible. I’m not complaining, but I do work extremely hard to make sure it’s successful. Because it’s not just for me and my parents, it’s for everybody.
‘For the community, my extended family – not just my children but my brother, his children and cousins – they all come here and enjoy it. It is a responsibility, but I’m determined to make it work.’
So such things as an advert starring one of the world’s most famous sportsmen cause great excitement.
For weeks on end, location scouts for the Haig Club whisky ad, starring Beckham and directed by Guy Ritchie, would arrive at Attadale, asking to be driven back up and down stretches of land and scoping out their filming potential.
The family are seen in the documentary watching a video about the forthcoming advert as Macpherson’s mother says triumphantly: ‘That pays for the roof, then.’ Sadly, that prediction was wide of the mark. ‘They did have to pay us,’ Macpherson concedes, ‘but…’
In the end, Beckham never set foot on Attadale land. The majority of filming was on the nearby Glen Affric estate. Altogether, a mighty 1.8 seconds of footage of Attadale made it into the final cut. ‘It was still exciting though,’ says the determinedly upbeat Macpherson.
Not all of estate life is so glamorous. She spends a surprising amount of time behind a computer dealing with paperwork. ‘Honestly,’ she says with a sigh, ‘I could be there all day if I wasn’t careful. I really have to be disciplined.’
But she loves nothing more than getting out on the hill, particularly during deer cull season. In the documentary we see her grown-up son Jack, who lives in London, bringing a wide-eyed friend on his first deerstalking trip. The young man goes through the tradition of ‘blooding’, where his face is smeared with the blood of the stag he has shot.
For Macpherson, stalking is part of life on the estate. ‘It is all about managing the number of deer on the land,’ she says. ‘It has to be done and it takes you up to the most wonderful part of the mountains.’
The whole family is nervous about the documentary. ‘I’m worried that all it shows is us having parties and shooting and things,’ she says.
‘I just want to say for the record that there are 52 weeks in the year and we don’t shoot things every week. My father said he doesn’t want us to look like stupid toffs.’
At one point, her mother bemoans her husband’s parsimoniousness. ‘I’m jolly lucky if I get a birthday present,’ she says. ‘Great mistake, marrying a Scot. They’re awfully mean.’ Oh golly.
‘She is a driven woman,’ says Macpherson. ‘Her health is up and down but while there is a breath in her body she’ll be driving us all on. She’s just concerned she might have made a fool of herself on television. She’s a very motivated person but she doesn’t do email or the internet or anything like that, so she views it with dark suspicion.’
FOR Macpherson, the sheer beauty of Attadale is part of the joy of running an estate. Yet there are certain things she still misses about London life. ‘I like art galleries, the Tate and the Royal Academy,’ she says, a touch mournfully. ‘Does that sound sad? But I’m lucky enough that we’ve got a railway station right here, so I can leave Attadale at 5.50pm and be in London by 7.30am on the sleeper.’
She has not, she says, had a conversation with her son about inheriting the estate, mostly because her father never did with her. ‘I wouldn’t want to put pressure on at all. My father showed great insight with me. I got on with my life and had a successful career without the thought of Attadale ever coming into my mind.
‘But now I’m here, it’s different and exciting and stimulating – and you never know what’s round the corner. You just have to seize every opportunity that comes along.’
With that, she goes off to see to the garden.
Lady Lairds, BBC1 Scotland, Monday, March 7, 9pm.