Ramsay William Rainsford Hannay, chief of Clan Hannay and head of one of the oldest established families in south- west Scotland, has died at the age of 92. The family originated from Sorbie Tower in Wigtownshire and have lived at their present home at Kirkdale, near Newton Stewart, since 1532.
He was a founder member of the Clan Hannay Society in 1960, and subsequently became its Chief. He came increasingly to enjoy the contact it gave him with many people across the world and he made several trips to Clan events in the US. He was a member of the Council
of Chiefs and of the Royal Company of Archers.
He was born in India in 1911, where his father was serving
in the Army. He returned to Scotland with his parents, and while his father was in the trenches in France, he lived with his mother in Edinburgh, where he first went to school. He had early memories of the poverty of the Old Town, and of funeral processions along Princes Street carrying victims of the 1918 flu pandemic. During the First World War, his father was wounded, and his mother lost her brother. Ramsay also lost an uncle on his father's side.
He was educated at Winchester College and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied law and rowed for his college, as he had for his school. After university, he worked for a short time for an estate agent in Ayrshire, before going to London to complete his legal training.
At the outbreak of the Second World War, he joined the Highland Light Infantry, but after being stationed in Glasgow he was seconded to the special operations executive, where
he trained personnel both in Canada and in the UK for operations behind enemy lines in Europe. He was in Paris at the liberation of France, and in Berlin before the advancing Russian Armies got there. After the war, he resumed his career in the legal department of the Board of Trade in London, where he worked under Harold Wilson and Edward Heath. As a younger man he was a keen sailor and was a member of the Royal Ocean Racing Club.
Aged about 55, he found himself inheriting two old family properties in Galloway. With great foresight he knocked down two thirds of one and converted the other into apartments. He used the potential of beaches on the Solway coast to start a
successful caravan park, which he realised provided a way for his family to continue their long association with the area.
For over 25 years he was
president of the Galloway Area Scout Council, and for many years served on the committee of the dry stane dyking competition. He was a founder member of the Dry Stone Walling Association of Great Britain, and at one time its president.
A founder chairman of the South West of Scotland Holiday Parks Association, he was on the National Caravan Council and the National Federation of Site Operators. He was a Trustee of Carsluith Hall and at one time chairman of the Hall Committee, and also Honorary President of the Gatehouse Festival Group. To all these activities he brought humour, Christian faith and a genuine concern for the people involved.
In 1936 he married Margaret Wiseman, who predeceased him. He is survived by a daughter and a son, three grandsons and four great grandchildren.
He lived in a cottage next to his grandson and great grandchildren, but latterly was in a local nursing home, where he faced his increasing disabilities with patience, courage and good humour. After a well attended funeral service at Kirkmabreck Parish Church in Creetown, he was buried in the old churchyard above Kirkdale House, his
family home.
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