The Chief
George Gordon MacMillan of MacMillan and Knap, M.A., D.L.
(born 1930 in London, England) is the eldest of the five children of the
late
General Sir Gordon Holmes Alexander MacMillan and Marian
Blakiston-Houston.
George went to school at Eton College, Windsor, and then read Classics at Trinity College, Cambridge. He initially pursued an academic career - despite being handicapped from an early age by an hereditary eye disease (Retinitis Pigmentosa) which makes it impossible for him to read from the page himself - and, after teaching classics at Wellington College, Berkshire, for ten years, was in 1963 invited to spend a year as “Visiting Professor in Religious Studies” at Trinity College in Toronto. In 1961 George had married Jane Spurgin, an Oxford University graduate and medical social worker at St.Thomas’ Hospital in London, and together with their infant son Arthur (born 1962) George and Jane enjoyed a memorable year in Canada, where their second son Richard was born, and where they had the chance to meet many MacMillans and descendants of other emigrant Scots.
Upon their return to Britain, and after doing a course in Personnel Management at Strathclyde University, George was offered a post as Lecturer in Religious Studies at Bede College at Durham in the north-east of England, which was within relatively easy reach of Finlaystone, the estate which George had inherited in 1955 from his maternal grandmother, and where his parents settled following his father’s retirement from the army. George and Jane’s third son, Malcolm, was born in 1967 at Durham, which they left in 1974 to settle back at Finlaystone to join Sir Gordon and Lady Marian in running the estate.
Finlaystone had by then become the home of Clan MacMillan, since in 1952 George’s father had been declared by the Lord Lyon to be the Hereditary Chief of Clan MacMillan, as the heir of Sir Gordon’s great-great-grand-uncle Duncan MacMillan of Dunmore who had died childless 153 years before. The discovery of a chief stimulated a renewal of interest in their clan roots by MacMillans all over the world, and George represented his father on a number of occasions at overseas gatherings of the clan, before himself succeeding as MacMillan of MacMillan following Sir Gordon’s death in 1986.
The Chief clears the way at Finlaystone
Though blessed in later years with a happy and ever-growing family - two sons and five grandchildren - George and Jane were faced in 1985 with the tragic loss of their middle son Richard in an automobile accident; which prompted them to set up a charitable trust in his memory. Jane MacMillan was active on the boards of local hospitals and the area branch of Macmillan Cancer Relief , while George is a past member of the board of the nearby Quarriers Homes and continues to be involved in other charitable work. He is also an elder of the Langbank parish church, and of course an active member of the Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs.
George has continued to be an active traveller on behalf of the clan, attending the Stone Mountain Games in Georgia, USA, in 1990 as the “Honored Guest”; touring the Maritime Provinces of Canada in 1991; being the “Guest of Honor” at the Fresno Games in California in 1995; and, in his busiest year yet, appearing in 1997 as a “Distinguished Guest” at both the Glengarry Highland Games in Ontario, and at Stone Mountain in Georgia, before travelling on with Jane for their first visit to New Zealand and their second to Australia. In 1998 George was a "Distinguished Guest" at the Grandfather Mountain Games in North Carolina whilst attending a gathering of the clan's largest society, the Appalachian Branch, USA; and in 1999 he was the "Honored Guest" at Jackson, MS, for the Highland Games of Mississippi whilst attending the 49th Annual Reunion of the McMillin and Related Families of Mississippi and celebrating the 41st Anniversary of the Clan MacMillan Society of North America. In May 2001 he and Jane attended a Scottish festival and mini-gathering in Pennsylvania, USA, before going on to a reunion of Chlann an Taillear in McMullen, VA; and in August of the same year they returned to the maritime Provinces of Canada for the biennial CMSNA gathering. In February of 2002 they visited the clan in California and Arizona, and in May of that year George was the "Honored Guest" at the Glasgow Highland Games in Kentucky. In August of 2003 they attended the CMSNA's "Liberty Gathering" in New York - which sadly was to be Jane's last clan trip abroad - and in August of 2005 George made an emotional return to Ontario, where he and Jane had spent a happy year early in their married life, to attend the CMSNA's gathering in London and to be one of the Distinguished Guests at the Fergus Highland Games.
Despite enjoying all the travelling and other activities that fill his life to overflowing, George’s first love, along with his immediate family, is Finlaystone; the gardens and woods of which he cultivates personally every day of the year that he is at home. Though the estate is open daily for any visitors to admire the family’s horticultural skills (George’s sister Judy looks after the gardens and his brother David the neighbouring farmlands), MacMillans are specially catered for in the Clan Centre that George and Jane opened in 1991.
Jane MacMillan was diagnosed with a serious cancer in 2004 and, after a typically brave and prolonged battle with the disease, she died in June 2005 [Click here for an appreciation of Jane MacMillan's life and work for the clan]. George and Jane had by then already handed ownership of Finlaystone over to their eldest son Arthur and his wife Barbara, and George now lives in a part of the mansion house at Finlaystone called "The Apple House Flat" - with siblings, son, and grandchildren all around him on the clan estate. He remains devoted to the woods and gardens that he and Jane took so much pleasure in together, and is always delighted to show them off to visiting clanspeople (preferably by prior appointment, but he's usually around the estate somewhere - if not visiting cousins around the world!).
To contact George by email please click here
The Chief and the McMillan Bike on Arran