THE “fund of last resort” for Britain’s artistic heritage has been approached to rescue one of the country’s greatest stately homes after the Nationalist-led Scottish executive ignored campaigners’ pleas.

On June 12 the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF), financed by the culture department in London, will meet to consider a £7m application to save Dumfries House, a Palladian mansion in Ayrshire, and its unrivalled collection of Chippendale furniture.

The grant is intended to go towards a £20m campaign to save the house and its contents. If the appeal fails, they will be sold and dispersed at auction by Christie’s in London on July 12 and 13. A catalogue is due to be sent out to buyers tomorrow.

The application to the NHMF followed a refusal last week by Historic Scotland, the devolved executive’s heritage agency, to give money to the campaign to save Dumfries House.

In the first test of its approach to Scotland’s cultural heritage, the new executive, led by Alex Salmond, the first minister, has shown little interest.

Linda Fabiani, the culture minister, said: “Historic Scotland are looking at it on my behalf. I have not spoken to them a lot. I do not know what developments there have been.”

The 7th Marquess of Bute owns the house, built in 1758. Bute – also known as Johnny Dumfries, a former Formula One driver – is determined to dispose of the house, its contents and 2,000-acre estate as they are surplus to his family’s needs.

Bute has a fortune calculated in this year’s Sunday Times Rich List at £123m.

The house is to be offered by Savills at £6.4m while the contents have been valued by Christie’s at £14m, with one rosewood bookcase alone put at £4m.

Dumfries House was the first major building designed by Robert and James Adam, two of the finest Georgian architects. It is also the site of the first commissioned collection by Thomas Chippendale, Britain’s greatest furniture maker. Many of the 50 items are still in the positions originally designed for them by the Adam brothers.

The house contains fine plasterwork as well as tapestries that once belonged to Louis XIV, the 17th century “Sun King” of France. “If the contents of Dumfries House were sold it would be as bad as, if not worse than, the sale of the contents of Mentmore,” said David Barrie, chief executive of the Art Fund, which raises money to keep works in Britain.

The collection assembled by the Rothschild family at the neo-classical Mentmore Towers in Buckinghamshire was broken up and sold in 1977, causing a public furore.

The contents of Dumfries House have been described as “a time capsule” from the Scottish Enlightenment. Bute, 49, decided to sell the home, which has been unoccupied for decades and is not open to the public, to “restructure his family’s finances”.

He is concentrating resources on the family’s main estate, Mount Stuart on the island of Bute – where his titles include hereditary coroner of the county.

When the sale of Dumfries House was first mooted in March a campaign was mobilised by the Art Fund, which put up £2m to help to save the contents, and by Save Britain’s Heritage (Save).

By last week it had also received £4m from a Sainsbury family foundation and £1m from the Garfield Weston foundation.

But the key was Historic Scotland, the equivalent of English Heritage. It was asked for £5m.

If it had given the money, another private donor, believed to be from England, had promised to match it with a further £5m. Last Tuesday Historic Scotland decided not to contribute, so the private donor withdrew.

Later last week the Scottish executive decided not to intervene to try to persuade Historic Scotland to change its mind, prompting Save to make the £7m application to the NHMF.

The NHMF, which receives £10m a year from the government, has intervened in the past to save treasures including Tyntesfield, a Victorian mansion complete with its contents which is situated near Bristol. The board’s chairman is Dame Liz Forgan, formerly managing director of BBC network radio.

One idea being put forward is for the estate to be sold to Kit Martin, a developer, who would convert parts of the property to be let out as holiday homes, while opening the main part of the house, with its contents, to the public.

Campaigners are continuing to lobby the Scottish executive to intervene. Historic Scotland said in a statement: “It has not yet been demonstrated that the current proposal to purchase Dumfries House is financially viable.”

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