Part of Ickworth, in Suffolk, the family seat and one of the grand houses of England, had gone to pay death taxes (and is now a tourist attraction run by the National Trust), but the marquess retained a 60-room wing.

ECONOMIST: The Marquess of Bristol | The

For the first time in nearly 300 years there is little to pass on to the next marquess, a half-brother.

ECONOMIST: The Marquess of Bristol | The

It also boasted a grand civic centre, created after the marquess of Bute sold 24 hectares of land to the city for the building of public buildings in 1897.

BBC: Capital claims - A city's struggle

When Frederick William John Augustus Hervey became the seventh marquess on the death of his father in 1985 he inherited a useful pile of possessions, including a 57, 000-acre sheep station in Australia and four oil wells in Louisiana.

ECONOMIST: The Marquess of Bristol | The

The House of Lords, already in a panic over the Labour government's plans to scrap it in its present form, hated the marquess for soiling its reputation.

ECONOMIST: The Marquess of Bristol