Her home was at Welbeck in Nottinghamshire, one of the estates in the north of the county that make up the Dukeries, a group of one-time ducal estates whose boundaries run together and form part of Sherwood Forest.

Alexandra Margaret Anne Cavendish Bentinck was born on September 6, 1916. She was the eldest daughter of the Marquess of Titchfield, KG (later the 7th Duke of Portland), and his wife Ivy Gordon-Lennox, daughter of Lord Algernon Gordon-Lennox, younger brother of the 7th Duke of Richmond and Gordon. Queen Alexandra, a close friend of Lady Algernon's, stood as her godmother. Lady Anne's great-aunt was Lady Ottoline Morrell, half-sister of her grandfather the 6th Duke of Portland, Master of the Horse to both Queen Victoria and Edward VII.

Lady Anne's father was Conservative MP for Newark in the Commons from 1922 until succeeding to the dukedom in 1943. He served as Junior Lord of the Treasury from 1927 to 1932, was Lord-Lieutenant of Nottinghamshire between 1939 and 1962, and was the second chancellor of the University of Nottingham from 1954 until 1971.

The founder of the family was Sir William Cavendish (one of Thomas Cromwell's "visitors of the monasteries" during Henry VIII's annexation of church property during the 1530s) who became Bess of Hardwick's second husband in 1547. The wealth gained during the process of dissolution was put to good use through Bess's business acumen and together they established major estates across the north Midlands. Bess's dynastic ambitions were realised through their second son, who established the line of the dukes of Devonshire, and Sir Charles, the third son, who founded the Cavendish Bentinck ancestral line of Welbeck. Sir Charles's dynasty produced statesmen, politicians and poets, mathematicians and musicians, playwrights, land improvers, courtiers and great horsemen. It also produced heiresses. A succession of three Cavendish heiresses from 1690 drew in the surnames and property of the Holles, Harley and Bentinck families, the last also bringing the ducal Portland title and descent from Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, an early patron of Shakespeare.

In a culture that was until recently absolutely dependent on the horse, the Cavendish family was unsurpassed in its love of horses. Lady Anne's ancestor William Cavendish, the Loyal Duke of Newcastle, may have been flawed as a soldier but he was supreme as a horseman, cultivating and promoting the fine art of the manège. William Henry Cavendish Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland, was portrayed twice by George Stubbs with his horses, and Lord George Bentinck, younger brother of the 5th Duke of Portland, was dubbed Lord Paramount of the Turf by Disraeli.

Continuing these traditions, elegantly habited, Lady Anne rode and hunted side-saddle expertly and with tremendous physical courage. She was successively master of the Grove and Rufford Hunt, then of Rufford Forest, which she founded as her private pack. She never placed a bet, but her horses were successful on the turf and she was a leading owner in the north of England. Her charitable interests ranged widely. She was president of the Nottinghamshire St John's Ambulance Brigade, and of Portland College. In 1977 she established the Harley Foundation, an arts-educational charity named after her great collector ancestor Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford.

More remarkable, perhaps, were the extraordinary acts of personal generosity she carried out with a minimum of fuss. Houses were bought, pictures or works of art loaned or gifted and children's education unobtrusively paid for, among countless other kindnesses.

She was famously forthright, funny and practical, a devastatingly gifted mimic, and would have no truck with pomposity or preciousness. When an acquaintance complained bitterly of her difficulties in returning to England from France at the outset of war, Lady Anne remarked: "My dear, you'd have thought she'd swum the channel with her maid in her mouth!"

Her combination of a subversive sense of humour and steadfast loyalty won her great devotion from a wide circle of close friends. Absolutely unshockable on a personal level, immaculately turned out and elegantly dressed for every occasion, she was, however, serious about social formalities, declaring "Well! I think I've outlived my time," when dinner stopped beginning at exactly 8pm.

Lady Anne took particular delight in her Northumberland properties, the Bothal tenants' annual party being one of the highlights of her year. She was a crack shot with a rifle and at Langwell in Caithness went deerstalking for 50 years with her beloved friend and stalker Ack Sutherland, both of them puffing enthusiastically on Embassy Regals, of which she was a lifelong devotee. She refused to be cowed by old age, and continued rather alarmingly to drive her small Jeep on private estate roads until a few days before her death.

Journalists who ranked Lady Anne as 511th in the Times Rich List could never resist guessing the value of the Portland properties. They were invariably wide of the mark, especially when including 30 acres of the West End of London around Harley Street and an estate in Ireland. Those London properties had in fact devolved onto the Howard de Walden family in 1879, and there was no Irish estate – although an Irish estate belongs to a different line of the Cavendish family that went its own way in the 16th century. The 6th Duke of Portland, Lady Anne's grandfather, created the first Welbeck Estates Company in 1926, passing to it Welbeck Abbey and its lands. The entail was also broken so that these properties would no longer be linked to the descent of the Portland dukedom. These arrangements made it possible for Lady Anne to inherit the estates on her father's death in 1977.

Throughout its history Welbeck Abbey has been altered by successive generations of its owners. Acquired at the end of the 16th century by Sir Charles Cavendish, Bess of Hardwick's third son, the remains of a Premonstratensian monastery were added to and improved countless times, most improbably by Lord William John Cavendish-Bentinck-Scott, 5th Duke of Portland, between 1854 and 1879. The subterranean drives and apartments (including a ballroom with a floor area of a quarter of an acre) built by this "Underground Man" remain a significant part of the house, although many of the legends surrounding the 5th duke are pure fantasy. In 1950 the abbey was leased to the MoD and became home to Welbeck College, the Army's sixth-form school. This arrangement, which proved to be the salvation of the house, came to an end in 2005. The house then once more became a family home for Lady Anne's nephew and family.

Following the cataclysm of the Great War, the family considered that great houses such as Welbeck Abbey had no future. Lady Anne's father Lord Titchfield, the future 7th Duke of Portland, commissioned Walter Brierley (the "Lutyens of the North") to build a pleasant brick house on high ground to form a new seat. It overlooks part of the lake and park, but is out of sight of the abbey. It remained Lady Anne's home.

Lady Anne never married. She is survived by her beloved younger sister Lady Margaret's son William Parente, his wife Alison and their children Joseph and Daisy. D.A. and D.P.

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