4th Marquess of Zetland (1937-2026)
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Nick MacGregor-Sadolin
Nick MacGregor Sadolin
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My two last names, a dot in between them, and @ gmail.com
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BREMENMURRAY
marquess
malcolm davies
marquess
colinp
The Marquess of Zetland, Jockey Club steward and enlightened chairman of Redcar racecourse
Reviving Redcar’s fortunes, he presided over a major redevelopment and launched £100,000 prizes aimed at small owners and local yards
The 4th Marquess of Zetland, who has died aged 88, was a prominent landowner in North Yorkshire and a forward-looking administrator on the Turf as chairman of Redcar racecourse, steward of the Jockey Club and founding director of the British Horseracing Board.
Styled the Earl of Ronaldshay until he succeeded to the marquessate in 1989, he took over from his father as chairman and managing director of Redcar in 1981, maintaining a family tradition going back to the founding of the seaside Flat course on their land in 1872 [….]
As a steward of the Jockey Club, meanwhile, the 4th Marquess was seen by outsiders as an enlightened and democratic presence among the “reactionary” group of aristocrats running the sport. It was said that to be a member of the Jockey Club you needed to be “a relation of God, and a close one at that”, and Zetland was prominent among the insiders who saw the need for change. In 1993 he became a founding director of the British Horseracing Board, which represented all interested parties and took over control of the sport from the Jockey Club [….]
Lawrence Mark Dundas was born in London on December 28 1937, the eldest son of the 3rd Marquess of Zetland, who as Lawrie Ronaldshay competed at Wimbledon several times in the 1940s. His somewhat domineering mother Penelope was the daughter of Colonel Ebenezer Pike, CBE, MC, whose striking portrait by his brother-in-law Sir Oswald Birley depicts him as a fencer – a sport he had taken up to cope with shell shock after the First World War.
The Zetland estates were acquired in the 18th century by Sir Lawrence Dundas, scion of a long-established Scots family, who became the chief merchant-adventurer of his day. Having made a fortune supplying bread and forage to allied troops in Germany during the Seven Years’ War, he bought swathes of land in Sligo, Roscommon, Fife, Stirlingshire, Clackmannanshire, Orkney, Shetland, Hertfordshire and Yorkshire, where Aske Hall, near Richmond, remains the family seat.
He was also a great patron of the arts, and commissioned such treasures as the Dundas Suite of ornate furniture, designed by Robert Adam and made by Thomas Chippendale, two sofas and two chairs of which were sold at Christie’s in 1997 for more than £3 million.
Dubbed “the Nabob of the North”, Dundas became among the country’s largest landowners, but despite his best endeavours he never obtained a peerage – he was a mere baronet by the time he died in 1781.
His son, though, was made Baron Dundas in 1794, his grandson rose to Earl of Zetland (an ancient variant of Shetland), and the 3rd earl became a marquess in 1892 [….]
Mark Zetland did not easily fit the mould of the typical landed aristocrat. The only club he belonged to beside the Jockey Club was the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. He never hunted, although he dutifully served for many years as chairman of the Zetland Hunt and president of the Old Raby Hunt Club.
He gave up shooting fairly early on, after which he preferred to be with the beaters and pickers-up on shooting days, and was not above being berated by his keeper when his dog ran out of control.
He married, in 1964, Susan Chamberlin, a few months after she and her mother had been swept off the rocks by a wave and her mother drowned at Polzeath, Cornwall.
She survives him, together with their two sons and two daughters.
The elder son, Robin Lawrence Dundas, Earl of Ronaldshay, born in 1965, now succeeds to the marquessate.
The 4th Marquess of Zetland, born December 28 1937, died January 24 2026
