From The Traitors to Downton Abbey

There must be few viewers watching The Traitors programme on television who realise the connection with the man who was responsible for overseeing the development of railways in the Highlands. This was Alexander Matheson who owned Ardross Castle, the setting for The Traitors, as well as two other mansions in Ross-shire - Duncraig Castle and Gledfield House in Ardgay.

The different homes of the Mathesons are detailed in the new biography of Alexander. This was conceived and partly written by Anne-Mary Paterson before her sad death, and then completed by myself. The Matheson properties included Hedgefield House In Inverness. This was lived in, first by Alexander's mother and later by his eldest son Kenneth. In between if was the home of Bishop Robert Eden before the Bishop's Palace was built on the Matheson Inverness estate.

Alexander and his family usually lived at either Ardross or Duncraig between early August and January which was then the parliamentary recess. As an MP for 37 years, Alexander had to be in London when the House of Commons was sitting and the family home there was in Mayfair. From his London home he could go to Parliament, the offices of the major trading company of Matheson & Company, of which he was chairman, and the Bank of England where he was a director.

Moving to and from his houses involved railway travel. One journey Alexander records in his diary was on 7th August 1883 when he had chaired a meeting of the Highland Railway board in Inverness and was returning to Strome Ferry which was then the station for Duncraig. In his diary he records that the train was over an hour late as a result of shunting at the stations. This was a reminder of the HR running mixed passenger and goods trains.

After Alexander's death in 1886, Kenneth Matheson began selling all his father's property in the Highlands, beginning with Ardross, which was purchased by Charles Dyson Perrins of Worcestershire Sauce fame in 1898. One reason was the Matheson family's financial problems, but Kenneth also seemed anxious to sever his connections with Scotland. This is clear as he went on to buy several properties in England. At the time of his death in 1920 he owned an estate near Totnes in Devon, but in Scotland only a few farms in Lochalsh.

In 1913, while a house in London was being built for him, Kenneth leased Highclere Castle near Newbury which was Downton Abbey in another popular TV series. This historical drama featured the Crawley family. The lives of the real life Matheson family, as this book shows, were as interesting as their fictional television counterparts. And the deception of a member of the Matheson family in defrauding the family firm, which overshadowed Alexander's final years, was worthy of The Traitors.