Laird faces court after ‘threats and abuse’ on family grouse moor

● Relative of Duchess of Cornwall ordered before sheriff

The arisocratic great-grandson of Edward VII’S mistress Alice Keppel has been ordered to appear in court next month, charged with behaving threateningly on a moor.

Dru Edmonstone, whose grouse-shooting family have owned the historic Duntreath Castle Estate, near Blanefield, west Stirlingshire, since they were gifted it by King Robert III in 1435, is accused of “behaving in a threatening or abusive manner likely to cause a reasonable person to suffer fear and alarm” in that he did “act in an aggressive manner, shout, swear, and utter threats of violence”.

The incident is said to have taken place on moorland at Cuilts Brae, Blanefield, near his home, Ardoch House, Blanefield, on 29 September.

Edmonstone, 44, is also charged with wasting police time by falsely alleging that a man with a shotgun was threatening to rob people on the West Highland Way the same day.

The charge alleges he told Elaine Hall, a Police Scotland call handler at the force’s Bilston Glen service centre in Midlothian, that an armed man was present, forcing police officers to investigate the incident, which turned out not to be true.

The case, at Stirling Sheriff Court, has been continued without plea until 18 November.

Duntreath Castle is a wellknown shooting estate.

It is the ancestral home, in unbroken succession, of the Edmonstone family, who were granted the lands by King Robert III as a wedding gift for his grand-daughter.

Edmonstone’s father, Sir Archibald, 82, the 7th Baronet of Duntreath, inherited the castle at the age of 22 and it has become a popular setting for weddings, seminars, private parties and corporate events.

In 1998 the castle played host to the Grouse Ball in aid of the Game Conservancy Trust.

Tatler magazine reported at the time that “it was more like a large country house party than a ball, a tartanclad evening where the 400 guests reeled the night away… a convivial and relaxed affair, which meant that the next day the grouse on the moor were thoroughly safe from the attentions of the guests”.

Sir Archibald’s grandmother, Alice Keppel, was Edward VII’S mistress and great-grandmother of Prince Charles’s second wife, Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall.

The Edmonstone Baronetcy was a title created in 1774 for Archibald Edmonstone, a former Tory MP.