Last updated 13:37, Thursday, 24 April 2008

Although his ancestry was firmly bound up in the turbulent history of the Borders, Sir Alexander Maule Jardine of Applegirth was well known in Cumbria, where he lived for more than a third of his life.

Practitioner: Sir Alec, pictured wearing bioflow bracelets – one of his healing products. Latterly he grew herbs to extract their essential oils

The 13th baronet and the 23rd chief of the Clan Jardine was 60 when he died at his home leaving his wife, three sons and two daughters.

Sir Alec’s life was interesting and varied. A would-be soldier, he went on to work in agriculture and engineering as well as in security, property development and alternative medicine.

He was a well known curler at Lockerbie and, further afield, a member of the Queen’s Bodyguard for Scotland and of the Royal Company of Archers. For 20 years he was an enthusiastic Rotarian and had served as president of the Millom Rotary Club, close to his Duddon Bridge home.

Born in the German province of Westphalia where his father, Colonel Sir William Edward Jardine, was an officer with the British Army of the Rhine, he was educated at Gordonstoun School, where a fellow pupil was Prince Charles.

He joined the Scots Guards as an officer cadet but then came government cuts in army personnel and so, back in civilian life, he worked for the small but rapidly developing Securicor company before returning home to farm at Lockerbie.

He completed an agricultural engineering course at Ayr and went to work in Oxfordshire for a few years, before he again returned home to Dumfriesshire to farm.

Then, as a mature student, he enrolled at Aberdeen University to gain a diploma in farm management but after his father died, in 1986, he sold the farm at Lockerbie and moved to live near Millom where his wife, Mary, had property. A journalist, she hailed from Angus and was the daughter of the Hon John Michael Inigo Cross, a one-time MP and Anne Parker-Jervis.

In property development, Sir Alec converted various buildings into letting cottages and latterly he grew herbs and extracted the essential oils. He also worked with magnetic energy, using magnets to combat pain as well as to make machinery operate more efficiently, – combining his interests in engineering and in alternative medicine.

His funeral service took place at Millom, in the Holy Trinity Church where he had been married and he was buried at Applegarth Kirk. Although Applegarth is the spelling for the location, the spelling in the Jardine family title is Applegirth.

William Jardine, funeral director, Dumfries, made the arrangements.

The history of the Jardine name goes back to 1066 when William, Duke of Normandy, conquered England, bringing many powerful French families with him.

Some were invited to Scotland and granted land between two Border castles, from where they defended the Border for centuries.