Mild exception taken
Sir: Whilst yielding to no one in my admira- tion for Sir John Hall, and being unstinting Me Demi Moore. You Michael Douglas.' in my gratitude to him for buying my for- mer ancestral home, Wynyard Hall (no one else was remotely interested), I must take mild exception to parts of Martin Vander Weyer's article (`Only the butler remains, 11 March). I certainly don't disagree with what the author says about the need for capitalist dynasties to replace each other, but I must defend the Londonderrys' record at Wynyard. Until the outbreak of the first world war Wynyard was a success- ful and self-sufficient estate. Its decline was due solely to neglect between the wars. When my father inherited the marquisate in 1949, Wynyard was in a parlous state, hav- ing been starved of investment for 35 years. This was because my grandmother preferred to live at the family property in Northern Ire- land, Mountstewart. Sadly my father died shortly after succeeding to the title, and despite my continuing his rescue work it was too late to save Wynyard, and its sale became inevitable. To say that Wynyard's downfall was due to indifferent stewardship by a series of feckless male heirs is simply not true. Both my father and I fought valiantly to save Wyn- yard, but it could not survive the conse- quences of years of neglect. It fell to Sir John Hall, a man of exceptional entrepreneurial skills and, most importantly, unencumbered by ancestral considerations, to develop Wyn- yard as it needed to be and he has done so magnificently.
Londonderry
PO Box 8, Shaftesbury, Dorset
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