A TRAVEL tycoon who gave away the bulk of her multi-million pound fortune during her lifetime left £11.6 million to her family in her will.

Philanthropist Margaret Moffat built up huge wealth after founding the AT Mays travel empire with her late husband Jim but later said it was too much for her to spend.

The couple started a ticket agency in a wooden shed in Saltcoats, Ayrshire, in the 1950s and grew it into one of the largest travel companies in the UK.

They sold the business to the Royal Bank of Scotland(RBS) in 1988 and following Jim's death Margaret, who was known as Margie, set up a charitable trust to help good causes in Scotland.

In 2007, Mrs Moffat, of West Kilbride, Ayrshire, donated £50 million worth of RBS shares to the Moffat Charitable Trust and said she wanted to see it benefit others in her lifetime.

Her recently published will shows she had £11,644,319 of personal wealth left at the time of her death aged 92 in October last year.

The legal papers show she owned Pounds 8.5 million worth of land in Dumfries and Galloway, the Borders, Ayrshire and Cumbria.

She also had almost Pounds 700,000 worth of properties in Ayrshire and a Pounds 2 million shares portfolio.

Mrs Moffat's furniture and personal belongings were valued at Pounds 2,597 and her collection of jewellery was valued at Pounds 13,877.

She was shown to have modest taste in cars with her Honda Civic valued at just Pounds 1,580.

In her will, she left gifts totalling Pounds 100,000 to friends and instructed that the rest of her estate should be held for her son Jamie and three grandchildren.

Although the funds of Mrs Moffat's charitable trust fell significantly when RBS had to be bailed out by the taxpayer in 2008, it has still donated more than Pounds 22 million to charitable projects so far.

Her son Jamie Moffat, the former owner and chairman of Kilmarnock FC, is one of the trustees.