Patrick Gordon-Duff-Pennington: Farmer, poet and manager of estates

The charismatic landowner stood up for the interests of the countryside and helped to transform the fortunes of Muncaster Castle

Nicknamed ‘Patrick of the Hills’, he wasn’t afraid to take on authority (Courtesy of the Gordon-Duff-Pennington family)

Patrick Gordon-Duff-Pennington, who has died aged 90, was a larger-than-life character and undoubtedly a competitor for the longest name in British agriculture.

He was a landowner in both England and Scotland, a poet, farmer, manager of great estates, public servant, conservationist, a thorn in the side of authority, and his successful stewardship of the once ailing Muncaster estate in Cumbria helped transform a crumbling historic building into one of the country’s most popular tourist attractions. No less pivotal was his contribution to Ardverikie, the estate in the Scottish Highlands that became the setting for Monarch of the Glen, the hit BBC series.

Patrick Thomas Gordon-Duff was born in London while his mother visited the capital from Moray. He quickly learnt how to get on with difficult people during his time at Eton College, and while reading modern history at Oxford he served as secretary of the university rifle club. During national service in the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders, he was selected to carry the regimental colours at the coronation parade in 1953.

He subsequently moved to the Sandringham estate to study land management with Sir William Fellowes. Gifted a hill farm in Dumfriesshire by his grandfather, he would later add Pennington to his name when he married, the result of the rules governing the family estate of his wife, Phyllida Pennington.

Once part of the Kingdom of Strathclyde and built on land first granted to Alan de Penitone in 1208, the Pennington’s family seat, Muncaster Castle, lies at the foot of Eskdale, barely a mile from the town of Ravenglass on the west coast of Cumbria. Within its vast acreage of parkland and gardens, once tended by 36 gardeners, the estate’s massive terraces of rhododendrons and azaleas have long remained among the finest in the world. With Muncaster losing some £50,000 a year, the couple, together with their quartet of young daughters, left their Scottish hill farm and agreed to move south to attempt to sort out the many problems beginning to overwhelm this historic venue.

Dramatically silhouetted against the rugged Cumbria coastline, the castle once played host to King Henry VI when he was found wandering after the Battle of Hexham in 1464. Legend states that on his departure he left his drinking bowl behind in gratitude, saying that as long as it stayed whole and untouched, the Penningtons would thrive.

With the castle needing urgent maintenance in the 1980s, the whole enterprise quickly sought to diversify its income streams without spending capital it did not have. The first move was to sell off some of the family silver. The support of local Labour MP Jack Cunningham, opposition heritage spokesperson, helped raise a much-needed £500,000 with further funds coming from the Millennium Commission. A succession of rich American guests also increased turnover.

With the site transformed into an award-winning tourist attraction, Gordon-Duff-Pennington could often be found taking the entrance fee before guiding visitors around the house, judiciously mixing historical facts with selections of his own poetry. He wrote to Mikhail Gorbachev in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster, which so affected Cumbria, but the Russian embassy refused to accept a letter from a man with three surnames.

With a copy of his autobiography, ‘Those Blue Remembered Hills’ (Courtesy of the Gordon-Duff-Pennington family)

Among the family’s other holdings was Ardverikie, the 38,000-acre Scottish sporting estate situated between Aviemore and Fort William on the shores of Loch Laggan. Once seen as the future home of Queen Victoria before she chose Balmoral, it was first purchased by the family in 1867. Later run by a family trust, here again Gordon-Duff-Pennington’s input and expertise, when serving as its managing director, proved crucial in helping to develop its potential. Before its popularity in Monarch of the Glen (2000-2005), the house and grounds also doubled as Balmoral for the 1997 feature film Mrs Brown, starring Dame Judi Dench and Billy Connolly. More recently, it stood in as Balmoral in Netflix’s The Crown.

Proudly representing his fellow farmers, Gordon-Duff-Pennington served as a convenor for both the Scottish National Farmers Union and the Scottish Landowners’ Federation – and he served as county chair of the Cumbrian NFU. He was awarded an MBE and an OBE for his services to agriculture, and appointed to the Lake District Special Planning Board.

As well as his long association with the British Soviet Friendship Society, he served as deputy lieutenant of Cumbria and chair of the Deer Commission for Scotland. It was during the course of one of his many visits to parliament that he was famously dubbed “Patrick of the Hills”.

Often deploying poetry in his many battles with officialdom, Gordon-Duff-Pennington’s published collections include an early selection, Poems, as well as Last Post and Reveille, Patrick of the Hills and The Black Dog’s Day. In 2004, he published a most delightful autobiography titled Those Blue Remembered Hills.

He married Phyllida Pennington in 1955 and she died in 2011. He later became the companion of former Olympic skier Sheena Hilleary. She died in 2018. He is survived by his four daughters.

Patrick Gordon-Duff-Pennington, landowner, farmer and poet, born 12 January 1930, died 9 January 2021