Batterflatts widow leaves £500,000 personal estate

Details of the estate left by a woman who lived in one of Stirling’s best-known properties were outlined in the Observer of April 1929.

Mrs Margaret MacGregor of Batterflatts left a personal estate of £517,185 which, today, would be worth more than £33 million.

She was the widow of Mr John MacGregor, a native of Glasgow, who amassed a fortune while operating as a timber merchant in Rangoon, Burma.

Mrs MacGregor was a member of St Ninians Parish Church and lived at Batterflatts.

The Elizabethan revival arts and crafts mansion house in Polmaise Road was designed by renowned Stirling architect John Allan and built in 1893 for Mr Patrick Drummond of the Drummond family of seed merchants.

Mrs MacGregor had been a generous contributor to the Church of Scotland and in her will she bequeathed Batterflatts House to the church along with £30,000 (almost £2 million today).

She wanted her home to be used by the Church of Scotland as a ‘rest house’ for its deaconesses .

In Mr MacGregor’s will, he instructed that following the death of his wife a sum of about £120,000 (£7.6 million today) should be used ‘for the poor of the city of Glasgow’. Mrs MacGregor’s total personal estate in Scotland amounted to £420,179 (£26.7 million today).

Trustees of Mrs MacGregor’s estate were instructed to hand over, free of legacy duty, to the Corporation of Glasgow all her china and ‘bric-abrac’ as a collection to be placed in the Glasgow art galleries and museum in Kelvingrove.

Mrs MacGregor made a large number of family bequests and several annuities and bequests to servants.

The remainder of her estate was to be divided among such charitable institutions and societies in or connected to Glasgow and its neighbourhood and in Stirling and surrounding area.

According to the Observer, Mrs MacGregor was liable for estate duty of £142,103 (around £9m today).

Batterflatts House remained in the ownership of the Church of Scotland until 1954 when it was sold to Stirling Council and used as an old people’s home.

In the 1980s the property was converted to private housing and its surrounding six acres of grounds used for housing development.