The Scotsman 5 April 2001

The house of Usher is a ‘hovel’, but £365m in damages might help spruce it up a little

Once among the richest, most powerful families in Scotland, the Ushers collapsed in spectacular fashion. But the last of his generation is fighting for name and fortune, and he is not going to give up, Kate Ginn meets the man who won’t give up fighting for his family’s honour

Stuart Usher has been fighting for years for ‘justice’ for his family.

Stuart Usher is peering through his kitchen window and gestures into the distance towards a hill on the horizon.

"That used to be part of my family’s estate," he says, turning away from the view. "I bought this house so that I could see it every day.

"First thing every morning, I go for a walk or a run and look at that hill. It inspires me to fight on."

It’s an ordinary hill in the Scottish Borders, you would not think it worthy of a protracted legal battle that has cost Stuart Usher his every last penny and consumed his entire life.

But that hill, splashed green with the colour of spring, is a constant reminder of the dramatic fall of the Ushers, once among the wealthiest and most powerful families in Scotland .

Then, their estates sprawled across 6,000 acres between Hawick and Jedburgh, including the Parish of Bedrule, which contains the hill. There were magnificent mansions, the country seats of Wells House in Roxburghshire and Pitheavlis Castle in Perth. Theirs was a privileged lifestyle of lavish entertaining and days out hunting and at the races. Now, all that remains is the family name.

There it should have ended, the collapse of a once-great dynasty becoming a footnote in history . And so it would have transpired, if not for Stuart Usher.

Usher, 59, claims that his family’s money was squandered during a wrangle over control of the estates, and has for years been waging a one-man legal battle to claw back millions of pounds he claims is his rightful inheritance.

His claims have been constantly dismissed. No-one in the legal profession believes he has a case, and he has been branded "paranoid". But he won’t give up.

In the latest twist, the aristocrat has enlisted the help of two businessmen to issue a summons for £365 million against Brodies, Scotland’s oldest law firm, claiming the company has been negligent in managing the family trust.

Behind it is a saga with all the ingredients of a best-selling novel, spanning the generations, laced with intrigue and betrayal, hidden family secrets and dark obsessions.

It has left Stuart Usher virtually penniless, fated by family blood, and tied by a sense of duty to restore the honour of the Ushers.

Usher lives in the shadow of a mansion house, a grand building of the type his family once owned. Callers to his home next door, a shabby white pebble-dash detached house, are ushered in with the greeting: "Welcome to the hovel."

Fragments of his family’s past status clutter the room; a heavy oak bookcase wedged against a door, a bronze bust of his great grandfather, Sir John, old photographs and the odd piece of fine china.

"Sorry about the mess," apologises Usher. "I’m the housewife and I’m not very good at it. I’ve let things slip a bit, it’s terribly difficult to keep standards up."

Times are hard. Usher has been trying to get a job for years without success and his wife, Gillian, a primary schoolteacher, is the main earner. Their two children, Catherine and Richard, go to the local secindary school in Jedburgh.

Their father, public-school educated and once proud member of the prestigious Usher family, is reduced to serving burgers from a van on the side of the A68 to passing tourists. There have also been spells as a mini-cab driver and a barman at a country-house hotel.

"It’s been a long and lonely fight," he says, scraping granules from a jar of Mellow Birds coffee. "Of course, I’m extremely angry at what has happened to my family but it’s not the anger of self-pity or anything of that nature.

"What motivates me is not the money so much as the pride of my family. When I discovered this particular can of worms, I was damned if I was going to sit back and do absolutely nothing. Now, I finally feel that I’m getting close."

It’s quite a wriggling mess this ‘can of worms’. Whisky, the ruin of many a man, built the Usher family fortune. So prosperous was the business, the family gifted the Usher Hall - currently at the centre of fraud allegations - with a £100,000 bequest in 1896. In 1906, Wells House was built, the finest Edwardian building of its time.

Sir Robert Usher, Stuart Usher’s grandfather, was known as the Whisky King with a warehouse in St Leonard’s in Edinburgh able to accommodate 25 million bottles, most for export.

Stuart Usher grew up surrounded by wealth on a farm at Bedrule, adjoining Wells. "My memories as a boy are of going to Wells. It was a wonderful place," he says. "We were always visiting relatives at one grand house or another. One isn’t aware as a child of wealth, I knew we had money but just accepted it.

"No-one ever mentioned money and I don’t like to, it’s vulgar. But there were parties and my father would go to hunting lodges in the Highlands. It was a comfortable life."

The estate eventually passed to Usher’s uncle, Sir Stuart. When he died in 1964, everything passed to his two sons, Peter and Robert, both of whom were afflicted with Down’s Syndrome.

Until the age of 15, both boys had lived in Argentina, hidden away to avoid shame on the great Usher family.

Peter was confirmed as fifth Baronet of Norton and Wells. "They were charming boys," remembers Stuart Usher. "Liked a laugh and a joke, they were great, and I was very fond of them.

"But their incapacity meant they couldn’t manage their own affairs. Several lawyers were appointed to run the estates on their behalf.

"We were always led to believe that Sir Stuart had not left a will, or that one existed and it wasn’t signed, but I do not believe that to be true."

In 1969, Stuart Usher and his family moved to South Africa to start a new life. When his brother John died, Stuart returned to Scotland in 1995 to find the substantial wealth of his family had all but disappeared.

All that was left was a £200,000 inheritance, long since exhausted by purchase of the "hovel" and funding the legal battle.

"In 1968, when I was 27, I stood on the top of that hill in Bedrule and made a solemn oath that I would never let the estates go out of our family," says Usher.

"My grandmother’s last words to me, as she lay dying in her bed, were: ‘Don’t let it go to those boys [Peter and Robert]’.

"I also promised my father that I would never give up the fight to get back what is rightfully ours. There is very much a sense of duty there.

"I see it as a broad fight, not a narrow fight for myself, but a fight for the Usher family. I’ve always regarded it as that.

"I’m the last male of my generation of the Ushers, the only one who remembers the good old days. I have the support of my family and a lot of support from the community here, they know very well what has happened.

"It’s difficult for my wife but she has been a constant support. I feel very sad for my family, that I can’t give them what is their due.

"I know some people think that I’m a troublemaker or talking nonsense but I’ve always known that I would get the estates back one day and it’s going to be soon. Stuart Usher is hopeful of success. "I’m bound to win. If there is any justice in the world."

His view is not shared by many. He has had 11 complaints against Brodies and other law firms dismissed by the Law Society. An independent investigation by the legal ombudsman also found no foundations for his claims.

He has been turned down by every solicitor and told that he has not got a case. But he still will not give up. There have been one-man protests outside the offices of Brodies and now the massive writ.

For £100, Usher has signed over his rights to the Usher claim to two Scottish businessmen, Andrew McNamara and Martin Frost.

The two men have agreed to use their names on the £365 million summons against Brodies, expected to be lodged in the Court of Session.

Usher is vague about the details of the agreement and precisely what McNamara and Frost will be receiving for their help. It seems a desperate measure but he insists it was the only way forward.

Andrew McNamara and Martin Frost are not new to the courts. Frost, a Borders-based businessman, was involved in a multi-million-pound legal battle with Unity Trust Bank.

Glasgow-based McNamara, a property developer, has also featured in legal cases. In 1997, he was awarded more than £1 million after suing his accountants, McLaughlan & Brown, and was later caught up in a spat with Edinburgh law firm Tods Murray.

Brodies says it has been cleared of any wrong-doing and will "vigorously defend" any new legal action. The Law Society says there will be no more investigations and the matter is now out of its jurisdiction.

The Usher affair is not the first time that Brodies has had problems with its well-heeled clients. In 1996, the confidential legal documents of 34 of its clients, including the Earl of Seafield and Sir Iain Tennant were mistakenly sent in a taxi to another litigant.

A thick dossier containing the wills, trust details, inheritance tax forms and statements of accounts were eventually returned to Brodies.

If there is to be another rise of the Usher family, it now rests with the Scottish courts. Stuart Usher has no intention of giving up. Yesterday, he was again picketing outside the Scottish parliament under the banner of his own lobby group.

"I have contemplated on a few occasions giving up but I quickly realised if I gave up, I would die, it would take away the meaning of my life," he says defiantly.

"The fight is the absolute centre of my life, it’s everything. Without it, there would be no reason to live."

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