When Pamela Foster married into one of Scotland’s leading aristocratic families, she found herself landed, not only with a new way of life, but a palace. The Earls of Mansfield had owned Scone Palace for more than 400 years; its abbey was where Scottish kings had been traditionally crowned and it was an emblem of medieval history.
It was also under dust sheets and decidedly run-down. A sprawling, red sandstone building outside Perth, built in the gothic revival style, with a castellated roof and a famous long gallery, it had been converted into a school for girls who had been evacuated from the cities during the war. Neither the newly married Lady Mansfield, nor her husband, William, pursuing a legal career in London, had contemplated moving to Scone. They divided their time between London and a family house, Comlongon Castle, in Dumfriesshire. Then, in 1971, the 7th Earl of Mansfield — William’s father — died, leaving the family facing significant death duties. The future of Scone Palace had to be decided. It had been opened to the public, but in a somewhat half-hearted way, with a few curious tourists conducted round draughty rooms by a naval gentleman in a kilt.
The houses in London, as well as Comlongon, were sold, and the new earl and countess moved lock, stock and barrel to Scone. A tax arrangement meant that in exchange for reduced inheritance tax, and to meet the huge upkeep bills, the palace had to be kept open for visitors, and Mansfield threw herself into converting it. She recruited a team of local women to help. The tasks were many and varied. There were, for instance, 120 copper pans in the kitchen to be polished, tattered curtains to be repaired, and carpets to be cleaned. Opening up stately homes for visitors was in those days a matter of trial and error, so when she installed a giftshop, stocked with items she found herself, it was an innovation. Family photographs were brought out, the best furniture transported from Dumfriesshire, and the palace’s most celebrated painting, of Dido Belle, a young mixed-race woman, painted in the 18th century alongside a daughter of the future 2nd Earl, was brought out of a back room and given pride of place. Research revealed Dido’s remarkable story: the daughter of a Caribbean slave and a Mansfield cousin, she turned out to have been, not a servant, but a member of the family.
“My mother had a good eye for pictures, but she also knew what would work for visitors,” said her daughter Georgina. “There was no road map in those early days, but she knew it needed glamour and public relations, and she gave it both.”
Her own connections helped. She was the daughter of an oil executive, Wilfred Foster, and his wife, Mimi; her grandfather was Alexander Duckham, founder of Duckham’s Oil. Mansfield herself was born in Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad, where Wilfred was working at the time, and she proudly held a Trinidadian passport to the end of her days. She and her brother Neil, four years older, returned with the family to Britain just before war broke out and were then evacuated to Canada, making the dangerous Atlantic crossing and finding themselves on Prince Edward Island, where the sea froze in winter. She made friends with the indigenous people who lived at the margins of the town after they started leaving presents of fish and shells at the bottom of her garden, and from then on, she felt they were her protectors. Meanwhile, her mother, a fluent French speaker who had stayed behind in Britain, was recruited to work at Bletchley Park.
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After the war, Mansfield went to school at Sherborne in Dorset and spent holidays in the hills at a French château in Provence, which her grandfather owned. She learnt to cook the local dishes, and became fluent in the patois of the area. She was also taken to Paris by her mother, who moved in the glamorous intellectual circle that included Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre and Edith Piaf. She perfected an elegant French accent with immaculate grammar.
Her parents divorced and Mimi remarried. Mansfield and her brother spent holidays at Crawford Priory in Fife, owned by her stepfather, Lord Cochrane. She was sent to a finishing school, and was presented to the Queen at court as a debutante.
It was a gilded life, but also a hard-working one. At the age of 18 she was selling antique prints at the Medici Gallery in Grafton Street, the first of several such art gallery jobs over the next decade in London. She and William were married in 1955, and had three children: Alexander, known as Mungo, now the 9th Earl, who, with his wife, Sophy, runs the Scone estate; Georgina, a deputy lord lieutenant of Perthshire; and James, who runs a commercial property investment company.
When William took his seat in the House of Lords as the 8th Earl of Mansfield, he embarked on a political career, serving as minister of state in the Scottish Office and later in Northern Ireland. After standing down, he became an honorary sheriff in Perthshire. His wife therefore became a political hostess. The couple divided their time between Scone and London, a formidable partnership, both north and south of the border.
There was a certain steely side to Mansfield’s character, and relations with her immediate family after Scone Palace was handed over to the next generation were not always easy. But she remained a fund of gossip, enjoyed intellectual company, and was friends with artists and musicians, as well as figures such as Richard Dawkins, the author and biologist, a frequent visitor to Scone; until the end of her life, she subscribed to the New Scientist. She was chairwoman of the Grand Tour of Scotland; served on the curatorial committee of the National Trust for Scotland; and was patron of the Scottish Churches Architectural Trust. She was admitted as an officer in the Order of St John and was president of their Perth and Kinross branch. Her most treasured role was as patron of Upper Springland, Capability Scotland’s centre for people with cerebral palsy, from which her favourite stepbrother, Anthony, had suffered.
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Today Scone Palace is one of the most visited and successful stately homes in Scotland. It owes much to Mansfield’s early work. “She threw herself into everything she did,” recalled Georgina. “She would even follow tourist coaches to find out from their drivers where they were going, so she could persuade them to come to Scone.”
Pamela, Countess of Mansfield, chatelaine of Scone Palace, was born on November 23, 1934. She died on October 2, 2022, aged 87