Castle Collector

Publicity-hating, 56-year-old John Crichton-Stuart, fourth Marquess of Bute, was quietly sunning himself last week in Morocco. In smoky Cardiff, Wales, an anxious City Council was worried over the rich noble lord's latest business deal. Announcement had just been made that Lord Bute--a collector of castles, the largest individual coal royalty owner in Britain, descendant of the 14th-Century Scottish King Robert III, possessor of 14 titles--was disposing of half of Cardiff's real estate to an unidentified London syndicate. Reported to involve from $100,000,000 down to $25,000,000 it was believed to be the most complex real-estate deal ever to take place in Britain.

Although keeping four Scottish homes, Lord Bute and ancestors have long concentrated their financial interests in Welsh coal mines, which now pay about $545,000 a year and for which the Government will give $10,000,000 when they are nationalized. To handle the coal, the Crichton-Stuarts built most of Cardiff's enormous docks. But even more lucrative of late have been the family's vast Cardiff real-estate holdings, from which $750,000 yearly in long-term leases was gleaned. Docks and real estate were both included in the sale--20,000 houses, the Cardiff Shipping Exchange, 1,000 stores, 250 pubs, cinema houses, wide suburban areas. Also included in the sale was Cardiff Castle, in which Lord Bute once entertained 10,000 guests and to which tourists pay one shilling entrance fee. Lord Bute, who with characteristic self-effacement went to War as Private Crichton-Stuart, also owns London and Edinburgh town houses, Kames Castle and Mount Stuart, Rothesay, on the Isle of Bute, the luxurious Moorish-style El Minzah Palace Hotel of Tangier, the Castle of Guadacorte, about ten miles north of Gibraltar in Rightist Spain.

Handling the deal for Lord Bute in London was his 28-year-old second son, Lord Robert Crichton-Stuart. Arriving in Manhattan this week. Lord Robert vehemently denied his father intended to invest his money in America.

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