Clement-Jones family 12/22 - Person Sheet
Clement-Jones family 12/22 - Person Sheet
NameKim Maurice FRASER, 273
Birth1946
Death9th June 2020
EducationAmpleforth
MotherRosamond DELVES BROUGHTON , 265 (1917-2012)
Spouses
Marriage18 Oct 1975
ChildrenThomas Oswald Mungo , 318 (1976-)
 Joseph Oscar Edward , 319 (1978-)
 Maximilian Alexander Kim , 320 (1981-)
Notes for Kim Maurice FRASER
Former Lt in Scots Guards

Obituary: The Hon Kim Fraser
Clan elder who became a stockbroker before following his heart back to the Highlands and fighting to save the family estate



Friday July 24 2020, 12.01a

Kim Fraser was the second son of Lord Lovat, chief of the clan

The Hon Kim Fraser was a quiet and modest man who made every effort to prevent his family estate of Lovat, one of the largest in the Highlands, from being dissolved by creditors after ill fate had befallen it. The Lovat Frasers are based in a wooded landscape in a soft and fertile part of Scotland that lies near Inverness and is known as the Aird of Lovat. They have been there for more than 700 years.
For some of that time the estate lands have been almost beyond imagination in both size and diversity, being spread across not only much of the arable north but also down the high hills of Strathfarrar north of Loch Ness, and over to the western Highlands at Morar. Indeed it was once almost possible to walk from one side of Scotland to the other without leaving Lovat land.
However, not all of that land is commercially viable. The abbey at Fort Augustus, for instance, was for many years let out by the Lovats to the monks for £1 a year on a contract that stipulated it was used only for religious or educational purposes.

For many hundreds of years the estate has probably lost money. At the spiritual centre of these lands lies a very large fairytale castle, Beaufort, which sits in the bosom of the Aird.

Fraser, the second son of the late Lord “Shimi” Lovat and his wife Rosamund, the daughter of Sir Jock Delves Broughton, was born in the castle on a January night in 1946. His father was the chief of the clan, a charismatic war hero who was once famously described by Winston Churchill as being the handsomest man ever to cut a throat. The family were also involved in a glittering international social circle that included the Kennedys, a family with whom they shared more than their fair share of misfortune.
ADVERTISEMENT

Like so many second sons, Fraser was forced by circumstance to make his own way and after an education at Ampleforth and service in the Scots Guards he cut out a successful career as a stockbroker in Hong Kong and London. However, his heart was very much in the Highlands where he had fished and climbed in his youth and where he had built up a more sensitive relationship with the locals than is usual among many of his background.

His first wife was Joanna North, with whom he had three sons, Tom, Joe and Max, and they initially lived in the south of England. Fraser was by nature a quiet and private man, happy in his own skin but relaxed enough to often greet his friends with a roar of appreciation and a hug. He was widely recognised as being one of the most approachable of the senior members of the Fraser clan.

After Shimi had a heart attack, it was decided to pass on much of the estate to his oldest son, Simon, Fraser’s brother. Simon was commercially adventurous but his business life became blighted by a number of severe misfortunes. Then, in 1994, he died of a heart attack while out drag hunting, only a week after the death of their brother, Andrew, who was gored by a buffalo in Africa.
This left both the management and the ownership of the Lovat estate under question. Soon the castle and much of the land were lost, the castle being bought by Ann Gloag of Stagecoach while many of the western acres were bought by the theatre impresario Sir Cameron Mackintosh

Fraser’s response was to come north and become an important part of the team that assembled to deal with the crisis and after four years he moved his family permanently back home.Over much of the next 25 years he worked hard and with some success to help reduce the impact of the crisis. Methodical and with a transparent honesty, he brought a certain atmosphere of serenity to a number of negotiations with both tenants and banks and became much valued.

In 2010 he was to marry again, this time to Sarah Fraser, the noted Scottish historian and lecturer, but within a year he had suffered a stroke from which he never fully recovered and she was to look after him for much of the rest of his life.

Many of his latter years were spent quietly managing his own lands, swathes of which were planted in native broadleaf and he said he was motivated in this work to “build up the lungs of the planet”. Fraser was a quiet and decent man, much of whose life was blighted by circumstances beyond his control. When told in May this year that he had terminal cancer he greeted the news with a dignified acceptance and died within the month with his family around him.
Last Modified 10 Jun 2022Created 4 Mar 2023 using Reunion for Macintosh