To the Manors Born. From city centre Edinburgh through Dalkeith, Selkirk and Dumfries to the English border

STRETCHING away down the Ettrick valley is a rolling landscape of wood and farmland, a place which looks more natural than most of the landscape passed so far, and yet one which is almost entirely manufactured by generations of Buccleuch dukes and duchesses.

This place, one way or another, has borne since the twelfth century the stamp of the families which the Duke of Buccleuch represents today. I am visiting on a cold day, with blue skies and snow lingering on the hilltops and in the north-facing fields.

The Duke of Buccleuch, 72, is in residence at Bowhill (built in 1812) where he signs himself, simply, Buccleuch. When he is staying at the great lump of Drumlanrig Castle in Dumfries-shire he signs himself Buccleuch and Queensberry. He and the duchess flit around the estate homes, from art-stuffed mansion-house to mansion-house. The other homes are Boughton House in Northamptonshire, sometimes called the Versailles of England, Drumlanrig, and his London residence. Dalkeith Palace, a popular family haunt 80 years ago, today is rented to the University of Wisconsin, which brings students to Scotland for a year at a time.

Down through the years, plum lands have been acquired by marriage and inheritance, to complete the shape of Buccleuch estates at the turn of this millennium. The sheer scale of the enterprise is emphasised by the fact that one of the five estates, Queensberry, centred on Drumlanrig Castle, is 110,000 acres in size, and the biggest single block of privately owned land in Britain today. At 280,000 acres, Buccleuch estates are twice the size of the next biggest private landholding in Britain, and half the size they were just 70 years ago.

The duke, who has been confined to a wheelchair since breaking his back in a riding accident in 1971, is an unashamed self-publicist and a great defender of the merits of good commercial forestry, and of the virtues of the landowner. He takes the defence of private estates to the extreme.

Shortly after our brief meeting at Bowhill, he wrote to me in order to venture ``one or two thoughts which may not have been covered''.

First, he let me know that nearly all the landowners used as bad examples of the breed had come from abroad, ``to fill the vacuum formed by traditional estate owners who have been driven out of business by the excessive taxation which has crippled and fragmented large numbers of estates throughout most of this century''.

This attack on the landed was the fault of what the former Tory MP calls ``pink politicians'' who thought landowners were an obstacle to progress. ``Perhaps they were at the time, but the barons of industry took over at least 60 to 70 years ago. This fact has escaped the notice of politicians of all parties, since they are almost all townsmen ignorant of country affairs, right up to today.

``Although the Great British public bemoan the decline of the countryside in terms of beauty and environmental protection, people are simply unaware of the cause and effect - the reduction, in one lifetime, of the proportion of land managed by traditional estates from over 90% to just under 30%.''

This last statement jars, somewhat, with the reputation of Buccleuch estates as a place where birds of prey were routinely, and illegally, killed to protect grouse-shooting. The estate has since declared any persecution of birds of prey a sackable offence and is involved in a study to determine what effect hen harriers and peregrine falcons have on grouse moors. The results are two years away at the time of writing, but I suspect the duke already knows the answers.

His letter continues with the sweeping statement that without the demise of the traditional landowner, estates like Mar Lodge would not be the subject of soul-searching today. And he takes a swipe at the National Trust for Scotland. ``If the previous owners had not been crippled by tax burdens, there would have been no need for rescue and management by the National Trust, which costs the taxpayer far more and reduces historic house atmosphere to that of Waverley Station.

``In summary, traditional rural estates, far from being a feudal anachronism, are being shown daily to be the best way of harmonising the often conflicting interests of the countryside to the advantage of farming, forestry, wildlife, recreation, and, above all, to the rural communities who live there.''

So there.

Although the duke was an active Conservative MP for Edinburgh North from 1960-73, and has been a tireless campaigner on forestry standards and environmental education, there is something that sets him, and his son, Richard, Earl of Dalkeith, apart from many Highland landowners: their estates make money.

The duke and the earl have enjoyed highly successful careers but they were not forced to make a crust in London, and they have tended to be less absent than most Scottish landowners. Although they both have London homes, they spend as much time as possible at their respective Scottish houses - the duke and the duchess (daughter of John McNeill of Colonsay, one of the oldest Scottish families) vacillating between the mansions, and the earl at his home of Dabton, by Drumlanrig. ``It is the antithesis of absenteeism,'' says chief executive Michael Clarke.

It is difficult to grasp the scale of the estate enterprises. Richard Dalkeith remarks that I am not covering much of the Borders country in this book, but Buccleuch, in its separate holdings, stretches from city centre Edinburgh to the fringes of Dalkeith, to Selkirk, to Dumfriess-shire and, at Langholm, to the English border. It adds up to an area equivalent to three of the biggest Highland estates, and enjoys better land - even though Lord Dalkeith points out that 95% of the land is designated as disadvantaged.

Bowhill, at 46,000 acres, employs 64 people full-time, eight part-time, and together the estates employ at least 250 individuals, or as many as 1000 if contractors and other related jobs are considered. The whole area (home farms and 200 let farms) sends 130,000 lambs and 14,000 cattle to market or abattoir each year, and produces 20,000 tonnes of cereals and potatoes, and 20 million litres of milk. There are 1200 houses on the land - a quarter of them are listed buildings, and a quarter are lived in rent free by employees or retired employees. The forests produce 50,000 tonnes of timber and there are more than 5000 miles of stone walls, hedges, and fences. This is just part of the story.

Buccleuch estates have an open-house policy for the press, and plenty of staff to interview. Waiting in the Bowhill estate office are Lord Dalkeith, Michael Clarke, and the Bowhill factor (each estate has its own) Niall Campbell.

Buccleuch Estates Ltd was formed in 1923, the year the present duke was born. He enjoys telling people that he does not own a single acre in Scotland, although he is chairman of the company. Technically he is correct, but then again, very few landowners in Scotland own their land as one might own a house. Most properties are in trusts in order to avoid punitive inheritance tax. Of course, if the land is sold, the money goes to the main beneficiaries.

The mission statement is laudable: to care for the countryside, to sustain the estates, and to improve public understanding of, and access to, the countryside.

Richard Dalkeith - it's shorter than Richard Walter John Montagu Douglas Scott - recently retired chairman of the south-west regional board of the Scottish Natural Heritage, and a member of the Millennium Commission - is a youthful 41.

Clarke, a tall, bespectacled man of ruddy complexion - redolent of a regiment - tells me the policy on Buccleuch land is based on the initials, VSE. They stand for value, stewardship, and education.

Value means a sound commercial base, without which it is not possible to practise the second goal of good stewardship.

Education is about helping people to understand the estate and the way it works, whether schoolchildren, students, tenant farmers, or visiting journalists. We are all welcome (another lesson for the Highlands).

``You won't hear people talking about biodiversity or the Earth Summit here, but that is what we have been doing,'' says Clarke. ``The two principal reasons we manage to do it are the family's commitment to this as a business and their willingness to see the money ploughed back and re-invested, year after year. There is a commitment to the inheritance, a common inheritance of all those involved on the estate.

``If this estate was broken up, it would be the end of life as we know it. This is an engine of labour creation, a large number of jobs would not exist without it. The returns are no more than one or two per cent, which makes it one of the most selfless forms of asset ownership you can get. If it was a monolith, if it was selfish, I could understand criticism. But it is a way of keeping families, and people, and communities going. The estate is not run at their expense.''

Dalkeith's father has recognised the vital role of education in attempting to win support. Those estates which hide from the limelight, which attempt to ignore developments in the outside world, whether at Rio or at Selkirk, are the ones which are most immediately threatened.

``No-one is going to get back to the time 200 or 300 years ago when everything revolved around a large house. But a lot of history and a place of some importance like Buccleuch estates should be part of the community. We have to look outwards. We have to think about what people outside think about what we are doing. We really have to relate to the local community interest.''

It is easy to view the Buccleuch estates as the best sort of paternalism on the land. Some of the estate families can be traced back as long as the owners, and many workers today will spend their entire working lives toiling for His Grace.

In an effort to prove just how popular his regime is, the duke conducted an anonymous poll of 125 farm tenants in 1993. When asked whether they considered the present system to be fair, quite fair or unfair, only 8% opted for the last option. And when asked what sort of landlord they would prefer, 96% said a private family company, or a family.

Was this a fair test of the value of the landowner today? Hardly. Of the 125 tenants, 44% had inherited their leases - and a way of life - and 56% had become tenants by application. They were, as it were, bound to say that. When asked how they would advise a young man with #100,000 to enter farming, an overwhelming 89% said ``rent a farm''. It is highly likely, however, that the duke and the sprawling estate machine are, at least, generally popular.

The estate is to be commended for the fact that, in some areas, it is not simply dedicated to profit. It is planting hedgerows, using the appropriate facing brick in renovations, putting in fencing which follows contours. It would be easier simply to make money. Clarke insists the policy is to take a long view of things, which means the prospective estate farmer with good intentions will be preferred to the less reliable applicant offering more money.

The houses are free to the staff for the duration of their lives and most of them are centrally heated - a rare thing on a big estate. ``I don't know any other estate that does that sort of thing to the same extent,'' remarks Clarke.

So Buccleuch is a great, sprawling, all-enveloping benevolent dictatorship (the estate would rather describe it as a co-operative). It provides sumptuous accommodation for the duke, a privileged lifestyle for the earl, and jobs and produce for countless others. It is trying to bridge the gap in understanding between the town and the country. It wants to have Buccleuch become part of the curriculum at the local schools; it is progressive, it is dedicated to diversification, and it carries out improvements with its tenants on a 50-50 basis.

Buccleuch estates are run in a businesslike fashion, with two highly political men in charge. The duke was for many years an MP, and Lord Dalkeith stood as a prospective parliamentary candidate for the Tories, and as a councillor. It seems his political ambitions, unlike those of his father, are limited by a modern climate in which the laird is no longer seen as a representative of the people, not even by the Tory Party.

If the duke has a passion in countryside matters then it is forestry. He is a great promoter of the value of commercial forestry, bemoaning the fact that nine out of 10 trees used in the timber industry in Britain are imported, and has little time for native woodland regeneration if it is to be promoted at the expense of a good, mixed forestry plantation with a commercial crop. Forestry management on the estate today includes management for game, nature conservation, recreation and access, although the current motivation is highly commercial. Much more so than it was in the post-war years.

The duke will reel off the positive virtues of sitka spruce and larch, which will produce a return in 40 to 50 years, and has made videos to expound his own views on the failure of Government subsidies, and of the urgent need for a much higher level of planting in Scotland. The national balance of payments, he says in a video with David Bellamy, suffers from the fact that timber is one of Britain's biggest imports, costing #1m every 75 minutes. He values native species in their place, he remains more interested in sound commercial business.

The view appears to exclude the possibility that, in the long term, a processing industry could evolve to use native broad-leaved trees and Scots pine. At present the industry is stuck on sitka because it matures in 40, instead of 80, years.

The duke expresses doubt that the native pinewoods being encouraged by Forestry Commission grants will ever produce economically useful timber.

``You must be able to produce consistent crops of timber and this must be done in a way that is environmentally sensitive, with sufficient open spaces, sufficient mixture of age groups and different species. It is best for wildlife, best for scenery.'' And, he adds with feeling: ``You have to make sure you are not going to invade your neighbours with all kinds of raptors and vermin.''

Earlier, on a tour of Bowhill with Lord Dalkeith and the chief executive, we stopped at about the 1000ft contour, between the Ettrick and Yarrow valleys, for a meeting with head keeper Brian Johnson. On the south side of the hill we were looking at an area managed by a tenant and damaged by the heavy grazing of cattle and sheep. Several years ago, the estate gave the farmer #8000 as an inducement to take stock off the hill in an effort to retrieve the heather. As a result of this conservation-minded action, the farmer's rent had to be reduced by #5000 a year.

``I find it incredibly difficult to get it across to people how scarce and valuable our heather resource is,'' says Lord Dalkeith from the driving seat. ``Heather is an island in the part of Scotland we are talking about.'' His real concern is the dwindling stock of grouse, the shooting of which should be a useful extra income for the estate. He blames the Forestry Commission for failing to control predators in neighbouring forestry blocks, and adds that raptors ``have been given the run of the place''.

Johnson clearly disagrees with the protection of all birds of prey on a grouse moor. He expects the winter kill by peregrine falcons to be ``enormous'', but adds, in reference to the estate's pro-raptor policy (which has won a lot of positive publicity): ``We know where we stand. At the kennels the other day there were 10 buzzards circling around. They are said to mainly take carrion and rabbits, but I have seen them take grouse and full-grown pheasants.''

Although the RSPB regularly quotes Buccleuch as a great supporter of its campaign against illegal persecution, particularly of the main grouse predators, the hen harrier and the peregrine falcon, there seems to be pretty unanimous agreement on the scale of the problem.

Clarke says: ``We know jolly well there is a strong case for culling and having control of the population of some of these raptors. They breed in other countries, while the poor grouse is unique to this country. But because it is thought to be a rich man's sport, those who subsidise the RSPB and others are simply not interested in defending it.''

Other bird life is positively encouraged, with owl perches erected in woodland plantations, and the resident forester on Bowhill went so far as to suggest that every wood should have its goshawk. A comment, I'd wager, which caused the duke to raise his eyebrows.

For all its enormity, the Buccleuch system illustrates a lot of the positive arguments for estate ownership. Commercial forestry has been more sensitively executed here than on many other estates, or by many private woodland companies. The intensification of agriculture which removed wetland and took fields to the boundary fence at the expense of biodiversity, has not been allowed on every corner of Buccleuch estates. The property does look at design issues and landscaping in its decisions, and the landowners are active in public life and committed to explaining why they are the best guardians of the countryside. There has been continuity in the management of the land.

In June 1994, the duke wrote an article in Country Living to debunk the notion that landowners were, in his words ``feudal-minded, port-sodden old hermits potting pheasants and putting up keep out signs''. He declared himself responsible for 430 square miles of beautiful landscaped countryside, and the people and wildlife it supports,

He cites the provision of access opportunities, the work of educational trusts, nature conservation programmes, and enlightened management techniques as proof of how necessary landowners are today. He and his son, he points out, have been through the hoops of calving, lambing, fence building, and tree planting. He is still master of his own foxhounds, although he doesn't get quite the same enjoyment following the hunt in a car.

The duke remains a significant figure in Scotland, with a deal of influence in the worlds of art, forestry, and politics. Buccleuch estates are all but a household name, and he has managed, at a difficult time for landowners, to maintain a positive image.

But in strict environmental terms, there are too many sheep on the hills, there is too little biodiversity in the commercial forests, and native woodland is almost non-existent. The rivers are suffering from a lack of management. As elsewhere, there are rumours that raptors are still killed and there is no shortage of heather cropped to a stubble.

If the public is to find fault, then it is more likely to be founded on an individual distaste for omnipotent ownership itself. Are all those mansions, those endless hills and forests and farms best owned by one family?

The Buccleuch Estates

BOWHILL

The house is a mile above the confluence of the Ettrick and Yarrow rivers, two of the main tributaries of the Tweed. It includes the ruins of Newark Castle. During the nineteenth century the grounds were landscaped and two lochs were excavated. It is open to the public from May to August.

DRUMLANRIG

Also known as the Queensberry estate, is situated in the valley of the River Nith. Part of the estate was derived from King Robert Bruce, whose right-hand man was Sir James Douglas of Drumlanrig. The castle was built of local sandstone during 1679-91 on the site of an old Douglas stronghold and is regarded as an important renaissance building. Approximately 88% of the surrounding 110,000-acre Nithsdale estate is in tenanted farms, with just 3000 acres of in-hand farm concentrating on dairy farming. The dairy farm provides 50% of the income. The 10,000 acres of forestry are a great love of the duke and the castle policies have a number of specimen trees, including the biggest sycamore in Britain. The castle and grounds are open from May to August for an average of 35,000 visitors.

LANGHOLM

Also known as Eskdale and Liddesdale estate, it covers 94,000 acres from the English border to Hawick. Once Douglas territory, the lands were confiscated when the Douglases quarrelled with King James II and were defeated at the Battle of Arkinholm (now Langholm) in 1455. Much of the land was then acquired by the Scotts. The mansion for the estate was Branxholm Castle, which is now tenanted. There are more than 10,000 acres of forestry, 90 tenanted farms, and 200 tenanted houses. It is the site of a pioneering study into the effects of birds of prey on grouse.

DALKEITH

Covering 2500 acres on the outskirts of Edinburgh, Dalkeith has been in the Buccleuch family for almost 600 years. In the early eighteenth century, Dalkeith Palace was described as the ``grandest of all early classical houses in Scotland''. The laundry has recently been converted and is occupied by Scottish Natural Heritage.

BOUGHTON

The Northamptonshire property came to the Buccleuchs through the marriage of Elizabeth Montagu to Henry, third Duke of Buccleuch, fifth Duke of Queensberry, in the late eighteenth century. The house is the result of a 250-year transformation of a fifteenth century monastic building. It is open to the public in August, and during the year for special educational visits.