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Charles Kenneth Moncrieff Stewart, the 7th and last Laird of Coll, was born in London, the only child of Dorothy Gilroy and Lieutenant Colonel Henry William Moncrieff Paul, who later replaced Paul with the surname of Stewart. Always known as Kenneth, he was a solitary child who had to wear a calliper for years to correct his right foot. He was left with a nanny when his father became a military attaché in Bangkok in the 1930s, and spent holidays in Coll where his grandfather, a fearsome brigadier general, lived at New Castle for most of the year. The estate had been purchased in 1856. Kenneth and his mother lived there permanently at the island´s Acha Schoolhouse, while his father was working at the War Office.

After attending Wellington College, he went up to Cambridge to study agriculture during World War II. He always returned home in the holidays, and while cutting corn there in 1942, learned he had become the new Laird. He was 18. His grandfather had died six months earlier, and his father, unaware of his inheritance, died in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, after being taken prisoner fighting in the Far East. The new Laird soon discovered the estate´s dire financial situation and had to forget what he had learnt at Cambridge and adapt his farming practices to Coll, milking by hand, as there was no electricity until 1979.

He married Janet Wilson, whom he had met on her regular summer holiday visits during his childhood. They had three daughters, and employed Mairi Hedderwick, the author of the Katie Morag children’s books as au pair. He told her "I´d inherited the Laird thing but I was just a farmer really". Struggling with financial problems he broke the entail in the 1950s which dictated that the estate must be passed from father to son, thus allowing the sale of land, farms and houses. He had some disastrous money-making schemes, but in 1965 sold off 14,000 acres, and focussed on sheep and cow breeding programmes. In the 1970s he was an early member of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust, and he became a successful cattle farmer after buying a pedigree bull. He was a respected judge of sheep at the Highland Show.

Unfortunately he was debilitated by a stroke in 1989, losing the use of his left arm and leg, and in 1991 Kenneth reluctantly made the decision to sell the rest of the estate and retire to the Borders where he continued to breed rare breed sheep near Selkirk. He recalled the Brahan Seer´s prediction that the last Laird of Coll would be called Coinneach - Kenneth and would be lame and have no male children!