Captain Alwyne Farquharson
Benevolent Scottish laird and long-serving clan chief who won an MC after the Normandy landings
CAPTAIN ALWYNE FARQUHARSON, 16th Laird of Invercauld, who has died aged 102, won an MC in 1944 shortly after D-day and later became Scotland’s oldest and longest-serving clan chief; he was also chieftain of the Ballater Highland Games for a remarkable 73 years and a landowner held in great affection by his tenantry and local community.
He inherited the extensive Invercauld estate straddling Aberdeenshire and Perthshire in 1941, aged 21, when his aunt Myrtle Farquharson (his mother’s elder sister) was killed in a London bombing raid. In the 1950s he gained the rare distinction of being able to describe himself as the Queen’s landlord after she leased a grouse moor from him adjoining her own land at Balmoral.
During the benevolent and extraordinarily long tenure of the genial Capt Farquharson, Invercauld struck visitors as an exceptionally happy and friendly place. So vast as to seem a world apart, the estate is smaller than it once was, but still covers close to 100,000 acres, extending from Deeside deep into the Cairngorms, where the scenery becomes more truly Arctic than anywhere else in Britain.
Owned by the Farquharsons since the 15th century, Invercauld encompasses several Munros, Glenshee ski resort, some of Scotland’s finest grouse moors and 24 miles of the River Dee, one of the country’s best salmon rivers, where Farquharson, a keen fisherman, once caught 16 salmon in a single day in the 1960s.
Since the late 19th century the Farquharson family had tended to let Invercauld House to sporting parties during the summer months and move to nearby Braemar Castle. Farquharson and his wife continued this tradition after they took over in 1949, their tenants including the Queen Mother, who took it for several weeks in 1956 while the builders were in at Birkhall so that she could host her usual house parties for the grouse shooting.
A friend as well as neighbour of the royal family, Farquharson declined to allow Invercauld to be used for the filming of Mrs Brown, the 1997 film about the relationship between Queen
Victoria and her ghillie John Brown. But the cost of maintaining the main houses continued to rise, and in 2007 he let Braemar Castle on a 50-year repairing lease to the Community of Braemar, a charity which opens it to the public.
Invercauld House and some surrounding land is also now let on a long lease to the Swiss art dealers Iwan and Manuela Wirth.
Captain Farquharson was born Alwyne Arthur Compton in London on May Day 1919, along with his twin sister Mary, two years before their father inherited the Newby Hall estate in Yorkshire. Alwyne and his siblings grew up there and spent parts of the Easter and summer holidays at Torloisk, their other property, on the Isle of Mull.
He was educated at Eton and in 1937 went up to Magdalen College, Oxford, to read Agriculture. His studies were interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War, whereupon he joined the Royal Scots Greys and later saw action in Palestine, North Africa, Italy and France.
Shortly after the landings in Normandy in 1944, during the advance towards the village of Maltot as part of the 4th Armoured Brigade, the then Lieutenant Compton was ordered to keep in touch by wireless with an infantry battalion that was attacking the village “in order that vital information might be available”, so the citation for his MC recorded.
The situation soon became obscure, however, so he made his way by scout car from the infantry battalion HQ to the forward troops, who were being held up by determined enemy resistance. Despite the very obvious danger, “to clarify the situation he went forward alone on foot 200 yards in front of our own infantry and although under heavy fire established the fact that five Tiger tanks were holding up the advance”.
While doing so he was seriously wounded, but he succeeded in getting back to the wireless set up on his scout car and although in great pain sent a very clear report of what he had seen. He was awarded an Immediate MC for his “outstanding devotion to duty” in getting “information which was of great value in enabling a higher formation to make an important decision”.
While convalescing from his injuries after the war at Newby, Compton met Frances Lovell Oldham, the vivacious former fashion journalist and editor of Harper’s Bazaar, who was some 19 years older than him. They married in 1949, in which year Compton also assumed the name and arms of Farquharson and was recognised as Chief of the Clan.
Embarking on their new Highland life together, the Farquharsons threw themselves into the challenge of reviving a much encumbered and impoverished estate. Nothing much had happened there for a very long time and there was much modernising work to be done.
Writing about Invercauld in Country Life in 1953, the famous naturalist and folklorist Seton Gordon observed how the Farquharsons had “enhanced the family reputation” by the way they “interest themselves in each tenant”; Gordon also noted approvingly that they encouraged the old Gaelic language, which was in danger of being lost in this part of the Highlands.
Renowned for her dramatic flair and flamboyant sense of style, “Francie” Farquharson soon made her mark at
Invercauld House by painting the entire exterior of a pagoda-style larder outside the kitchen in exuberant sugar-pink – “which looked marvellous against the snow,” as her husband remarked. She also spread her distinctive style liberally through the principal rooms of Braemar Castle, while taking great care to preserve the indigenous period feel.
In later years Francie persuaded her husband to receive paying guests at Invercauld, where she proved an alluring hostess with her charmingly softened American accent and her worldly yet also highly personal sense of humour. She also set up a series of shops and boutiques, and organised theatre, film and music evenings in the local village; and she was famous for her fashion shows in the local hall in Braemar, where people were lavishly clad in brightly coloured tartanchecked mohair.
Like his grandfather, Col AH Farquharson, a close friend of King George V, Capt Farquharson took an active part in local affairs, serving as a county councillor for Aberdeenshire from 1949 to 1975 and as a JP from 1951. Besides his role as chieftain of the Ballater Highland Games, he was also vice-patron of the Braemar Royal Highland Gathering; both events were regularly attended by members of the royal family.
He attended his last Games at the age of 100 in 2019, and received a standing ovation as he arrived with a guard of honour and made his usual eloquent and unscripted speech.
Frances Farquharson died in 1991. There were no children of the marriage, although Frances had a daughter from her second marriage, Marybelle Gordon (later Drummond).
One happy marriage followed another. Farquharson married secondly, in 1993, Patricia de Winton, and moved to live in Norfolk, near to where she had grown up.