Patricia Strutt

Patricia Strutt, nee Kebbell, died in her 90th year.

Born of Highland stock - the daughter of a pioneering New Zealand sheep farmer - she was sent to Britain to be educated privately. Later, while at finishing school in Switzerland, she was invited as a house guest to the rugged estate of Kingairloch which lies to the south-west of Fort William. While there she was to meet and marry Arthur, the laird apparent of both Kingairloch and Glensanda and huge estates in Derbyshire.

The reticent Arthur Strutt was a direct descendent of a close business associate of Richard Arkwright of spinning jenny fame and the Strutts had built a huge land bank on his fortune.

The couple - she the feisty New Zealander and he the reserved English gentleman - had a somewhat gaunt Victorian marriage made harder by more than its fair share of personal tragedy, never more so than when Arthur disappeared in 1977 and remained lost until he was found dead in Kingairloch woods in 1983. Thus the shy and commercially inexperienced 66-year-old widow found herself unexpectedly at the helm of a multi-million pound agribusiness with the additional stress of not knowing of the fate of her gentle husband.

It was a hard brief to meet but she soon proved herself to be well up to the challenge.

In 1982 the personable quarry owner John Yeoman disembarked two geologists disguised as campers on to the coastal Glensanda estate to take rock samples to evaluate whether he could dig a hole that would be big enough to swallow a small town.

Later, when forced to make a phone call, the shamefaced campers had to confess the real nature of their business to the estate owner. By then she was a wiry widow laird who dressed

in ragged tweeds held together with string and she greeted their confession with a wry smile while fingering her huge hunting knife and controlling her two massive dogs.

Very socially conscious, Mrs Strutt's first method of sounding out Mr Yeoman was to insist that his entire family came to stay with her so that she could ''judge the cut of his jib''.

The family passed and she sold him the estate for quarrying at what was regarded as being a fair price with little profiteering and the two families became firm friends. The Yeomans remained great admirers till her dying day.

Today Glensanda quarry has yet to reach anything like its final size but it already employs around 150 and distributes #4m a year in wages alone - all this development was to Mrs Strutt's immense delight.

In later years she spent almost all her time at Kingairloch, living a strange lonely life, sometimes generous, often not, always energetic. Her happiest days were spent among snowy corries where she turned her hobby of stag stalking into a cross between a science and a religion.

An enthusiast since her teens, in her dotage she admitted that she latterly only skied in the winter to enable her to be at the peak of fitness for her summer stag stalking.

Eating little and exercising rigorously, she further toughened herself by wriggling across her bedroom floor each morning and spending many hours in almost Zen-like contemplation of the micro movement of trigger release - refusing even a practice shot in case it unbalanced her mental calm.

The result of this preparation was lethal.

Ian Thornber, her stalker for 15 years, claimed that even when she was 75 years old he had seen her climb 2500ft into freezing rain, crawl up ditches swollen with icy water to keep out of sight, and then finally despatch two stags in eight seconds. This, according to the game book, she achieved at a distance of 210 yards with both animals dying instantly. Mrs Strutt loved stalking almost to the point of ecstasy.

If she killed her beasts outright she would keep the shell case for her collection, if she had to take two shots she would be almost inconsolable. Ian Thornber estimates she may have killed up to 2000 stags.

Pat Strutt was a shy woman of iron resolve whose contribution to the economy of the West coast of Scotland was immense.

She leaves two children John and Jane. A second son David died in childhood.

Her objective was to live with energy and commitment to the ancient principles of ruthless lairdship which she held so dear.

In this regard she had every right to keep her final shell case.

Maxwell Macleod