Still king of the castle at 73

Sir Jack Stewart-Clark tells Darran Gardner there is life after politics and big business bucking trends in tourism What does Sir Jack Stewart-Clark miss most about the bustling world of big business?

"The chauffeur," admits the energetic polymath who, at 73, is running one of Scotland's most beautiful hospitality venues. It is perhaps understandable that Stewart-Clark should appreciate the finer things in life. Dundas Castle, his family home where he was born in 1929, is an impressive base from which to work, situated eight miles from Edinburgh in a sprawling parkland setting overlooking the Firth of Forth.

At an age when retirement is the lifestyle choice of many, Stewart- Clark's role as chairman of Dundas Castle sees him bucking the general trend in the Scottish tourism industry. This luxury mansion is currently exceeding its targets for the financial year by 25%. Now operating as a profitable business Dundas Castle generates over a (pounds) 1 million of income for local businesses - from caterers and florists to photographers.

Given his track record in business, failure would certainly have been out of character for Stewart-Clark. Educated at Eton; Balliol College, Oxford; and Harvard Business School, this member of the Queen's Body Guard for Scotland spent 17 years managing the international thread business of textile giant J&P Coats.

Heading business operations in Portugal, the Netherlands and Pakistan, he showed enormous loyalty to what was essentially the family firm at the start of his working life.

Ancestors James and Patrick Clark had established a textile business to supply loom parts in 1755. Fifty years later Patrick Clark invented a method of twisting cotton yarns suitable as a silk substitute before establishing a cotton mill in the east end of Paisley in 1812. With Paisley's west end also housing the company, established by silk shawl weaver James Coats, the two family businesses eventually merged in 1896 to form the international textile giant J&P Coats.

"It offered good business training," says the former Conservative MEP (1979-1999) and vice-president of the European parliament (1992- 1996), "as the company was always careful about the pennies."

Moving on from J&P Coats in 1970 he became UK managing director of Philips Electronics' consumer goods arm. With responsibility for 6000 staff, the culture in the multinational was, he admits, a world apart from his textile background.

"Philips was completely different. I had a Daimler and a chauffeur, tickets to the opera, and I was in charge of a growing, exciting business based on a vision."

Stewart-Clark's next executive post was with Pye, the Cambridge- based transistor radio and television manufacture pioneer which was bought by Philips in 1967. For five years, from 1979 to 1984, he led the business that employed 20,000 people in 24 countries worldwide.

His political achievements (he recorded the second-highest majority ever for the Tories in East Sussex 1979) impressed many in his party, but not the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

While others were marvelling at his success in Tory heartland, it was left to Thatcher to suggest, rather bluntly, that his energies should be focused on the more challenging task in marginal Scottish seats. A man of his word, Stewart-Clark took this on board and began travelling between his English constituency and others in Scotland.

This helped him stay in touch with his Scottish roots and when he inherited Dundas Castle upon his mother's death in 1993, he accepted a new challenge: to restore the castle it to its former glory.

Despite the financial dangers involved in tackling such a mammoth project, one which ultimately offered up the delights of dry rot and crumbling stonework in a 15th-century keep, Stewart-Clark believed that his plan for the castle was not a pipe dream.

"Really it was a disaster, but I was able to borrow money from a bank and sell some of the Castle's contents to afford the restoration. Although we also had grant support from Historic Scotland, it was useful to be dealing with a bank manager who stressed that for every pound put in there was the potential to get three pounds back."

With the early appointment of a manager and a groundkeeper, the idea, he stresses, was never to transform Dundas Castle into a luxury hotel. The castle, with its proximity to Edinburgh (and the airport) and its magnificent country setting, had the potential to operate as a picturesque 1000-acre setting for weddings and corporate events.

Early business success in these areas highlighted the possibilities and the viability of a large family homes paying its own way. The weddings business grew through the late 1990s, proving to be a popular destination with couples from London and the south of England. Currently, 80% of wedding bookings come from outside Scotland.

To ensure that this most delicate of processes always goes without a hitch on the day, Stewart-Clark employs 25 full-time staff and a small army of outsourced staff - from events managers to caterers - who now find themselves in action almost every weekend. In 2002 alone, the castle has seen 86 wedding bookings against an initial objective of 70. Bookings for the year were up 43% from 2001.

With the ability to offer luxury accommodation, a nine-hole golf course, off-road driving, quad-bike trekking, archery, falconry and husky-sled riding, Dundas Castle hosts corporate events for companies such as Standard Life, the Bank of Scotland, Tesco and BMW.

"I think it's very important that customers realise we have standards," says Stewart-Clark, "and that we are never going to compromise. What we have to offer is not a hotel but a family home. And while we do advertise in bridal magazines and through our website a lot of the business comes through word of mouth.

"I would also like to think that we are not just selling weddings, but actually selling memories of getting married in Dundas Castle."

He acknowledges that the business's focus has helped it over the last few tough years Scotland's tourism industry has experienced and played a vital role in building a sustainable business.

"We did lose some corporate earnings after September 11 last year, but companies are still booking events even if they are leaving bookings until nearer the time.

"You have to be proactive in marketing, though. Too many tourism businesses sit and wonder what the tourism bodies can do for them. But we take a different view and ask how we can help them, as it's about partnering people rather than just expecting business."

Stewart-Clark remains reluctant to divulge exactly how much money has gone into restoring Dundas Castle, choosing the word "significant" to describe the personal and bank investment.

Dundas Castle has inevitably experienced "chilly periods" as a business, but since it finally broke into profit last year all extra revenue has been ploughed back into the castle and its maintenance.

On a personal level, Stewart-Clark is no longer involved in politics. However, after his involvement in a 1986 government inquiry into drugs, he went on to write a book on drugs education and work with the United Nations Drug Control Programme.

In connection with this UN programme, he has been responsible for organising the first inter-parliamentary drugs conference to take place between members of the United States Congress and the European Parliament. So far, he has helped organise three further international conferences involving parliamentarians and experts in drugs from 36 countries.

He admits, nevertheless, that he was glad to leave the political world and seize the opportunity to create a new business in his 60s.

"There's always a danger in politics that people get lost as they think they know it all. It's a world that's very divorced from reality, although I would like to think I took a more down-to-earth approach because of my business experience and my involvement as a non-executive board director through the 1980s.

"Dundas Castle was always a risk, but I always knew that I had a potential exit by selling it and making triple the money I had spent. Ultimately, my business life, with J&P Coats and Philips, has helped enormously because I would like to think that Dundas Castle was also a vision business."

Sir Jack Stewart-Clark has been married for 43 years to his Dutch- born wife Lydia and has five children. He served in the Coldstream Guards between 1948 and 1949. A Tory MEP for 20 years, he was responsible for Japanese trade and then competition law.

Copyright 2002 SMG Sunday Newspapers Ltd.
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.