Old Photograph Scatwell House Scotland

Old photograph of Scatwell House by Muir of Ord located eight miles South of Dingwall, Highlands, Scotland. Scatwell House was built in the mid 19th century for the Mackenzie family. The designed landscape was laid out by James Buchanan, Lord Woolavington, in the early 20th century. The property is still in the hands of his descendants. James Buchanan, 1st Baron Woolavington, GCVO, JP, born 16 August 1849, died 9 August 1935, known as Sir James Buchanan, Bt, from 1920 to 1922, was a British businessman, philanthropist, and racehorse owner and breeder. He was born in Brockville, Ontario, Canada, the third and youngest son of Alexander Buchanan and his wife Catherine, née McLean, Scottish immigrants, but his parents returned to the United Kingdom shortly after he was born and he was brought up in Larne, on the east coast of County Antrim, Northern Ireland, where his father worked as a quarry manager. Due to ill health as a child, he was educated privately. He joined William Sloan and Company, a Glasgow shipping firm, as an office boy when he was fourteen or fifteen, and was later promoted to be a clerk. In 1868, he joined his brother William in his grain business, also in Glasgow. In November 1879, he moved to London as an agent for the Leith whisky blenders Charles Mackinlay and Company. He realised that there was an untapped market in England for bottled Scotch whisky and set about producing his own, the Buchanan Blend. By 1909, Buchanans was the best selling Scotch in England. He supplied whisky to the House of Commons from 1885. In 1898, he received Royal Warrants to supply Queen Victoria, the Prince of Wales, and the Duke of York. Buchanan opened a Paris office in 1902 and a New York office shortly afterwards. In 1898 he opened Glentauchers malt whisky distillery on Speyside and later acquired two more distilleries. In 1906, he bought Lowrie's and rapidly mechanised their production facilities in Glasgow. On 5 December 1891, Buchanan married a young widow thirteen years his junior, Annie Eliza Bardolph (née Pounder). Although Annie already had a son and a daughter, they only together had a daughter, the Honourable Catherine Buchanan, and a son who died in infancy. Annie was a nurse and worked in London hospitals during the First World War. She died suddenly in October 1918. The peerage and baronetcy became extinct on Woolavington's death at Lavington Park in August 1935, aged 85. He left an estate worth over £7 million and was buried in the nearby churchyard of Graffham.



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