Conserving Yesterday and Today for Tomorrow
©NTPL/MATTHEW ANTROBUS
©NTPL/JONATHAN BUCKLEY
‘The Trust not only amasses properties, it also cares deeply that its holdings are preserved to reflect the times that they represent’
AT AGLANCE
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THE NATIONAL TRUST PRESENTLY CARES for more than 612,000 acres of forests, farmland, downs, moorland, fens, beaches and islands in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It preserves and conserves about 700 miles of coastline.
Every year, the NT welcomes some 12 million visitors to its more than 350 historic houses, castles gardens and mills open to the public. Completely independent of the Government, the Trust is a charitable organization, with 3.5 million members and 43,000 volunteers.
The National Trust’s central headquarters are in Swindon, Wiltshire, in a cutting-edge remake of a Victorian engineering foundry named Heelis. The building is open to the public seven days a week with a creative café and well-stocked National Trust gift shop. Public tours are given every Friday.
Only footsteps from the two small rooms that the Trust occupied in Victoria Street in 1907, the Blewcoat School on London’s Caxton Street is a charming, small red-brick building that was a school for the poor in the 18th century. Now a Trust property, it serves as gift shop with many items obtainable only from the National Trust. The school is easily recognized from the figure of a school child dressed in blue perched over the front door.
It would take years to visit all the National Trust properties and take full advantage of its brilliant walking opportunities, such as the six-mile hike around Upper Wharfedale in the Yorkshire Dales; or the walk around the Stackpole Estate through the spectacular scenery of Pembrokeshire National Park in southern Wales.
The Trust not only amasses properties, it also cares deeply that its holdings are preserved and maintained so as to reflect the times that they represent. In 2002 the Trust went to the rescue of the wild golden daffodils made famous by William Wordsworth in 1804 when he and his sister Dorothy were walking on the shores of Ullswater in the Lake District. Wordsworth wrote:
I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host of golden daffodils.
Those golden daffodils were threatened with extinction by another species growing nearby that would soon crossfertilize and destroy them. The Trust solicited help from the Daffodil Society and formed a plan to stop this invasion and to protect these flowers that mean so much to that area and to people from all over the world. At the time, the National Trust declared, “The wild daffodils are an historic feature of Ullswater, a living link back to the times when William Wordsworth roamed the valleys.”
IN PRESERVING ITS PROPERTIES, the National Trust has to cope and deal with urban expansion and environmental concerns of the day. The Trust handles this through its deep commitment to education, which is at the heart of everything it does. It offers programs to teach people about the importance of the environment and the preservation of their heritage for future generations.
An exciting new partnership and one that is quite timely is the relationship that the National Trust has entered into with npower, an energy company in the United Kingdom. Together they are creating National Trust Green Energy, a program dedicated to renewable energy sources and carbon saving measures that will enable consumers to “go green” in their own homes.
Under this program, npower will contribute £15 to a National Trust Green Energy Fund for each of its consumers every year. Meanwhile, the National Trust will be able to use these funds to initiate energy-saving programs at its various sites.
Membership in the National Trust offers free entry to all its public properties, including its historic houses and gardens, about 700 miles of coastline and 250,000 hectares of countryside (1 hectare is 2.47 acres). Members receive a handbook featuring all the Trust properties as well as regular issues of its colorful magazine.
It is easy to start a membership online by going to the Trust’s Web site at www.nationaltrust.org.uk. Americans can join the National Trust directly or sign up with The Royal Oak, the United States branch of the Trust, at www.royal-oak.org.
History and Landscape: The Guide to National Trust Properties in England, Wales and Northern Ireland is a definitive guide to the holdings of the National Trust. This beautifully illustrated volume was written by Lydia Greeves and contains a foreword by HRH The Prince of Wales. After the death of his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, in March 2002, Prince Charles took her place as president of the National Trust.
THE PRINCE’s ENTHUSIASM AND UNDERSTANDING of his role as president of the National Trust is summed up in the book’s foreword: “I believe I have become President at a very interesting time in the National Trust’s history as it builds on its foundation in the 19th century, its development through the 20th century and now faces the new challenges of the twenty-first.”
The National Trust continues on so the generations that follow us will be able to enjoy the natural beauty of its holdings and get a sense of the history of the past no matter where they may live or travel in Britain.