Even as a wannabe hip teen, I fell in love with the Trust
Everyone can enjoy a visit, says Mary, no matter who you are or where you live
MUCH AS we might like to think the past is preserved in aspic, the truth is our history and heritage are changing all the time. I bet the National Trust’s founders, for instance, would be baffled as to why two quite ordinary 20th century houses should today be conserved among its portfolio of illustrious properties and landscapes.
But we know what happened inside the walls of Mendips and 20 Forthlin Road in suburban Liverpool.These were the childhood homes of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who created one of the world’s most influential bands and sparked a cultural revolution.
And there are many more surprises. The Trust cares for lighthouses, mines, Britain’s last-surviving Regency playhouse, several pubs and even a spade-making mill in County Antrim.
When I was growing up in the Sixties, the fabulous Attingham Park in Shropshire was being opened to the public through the Trust, just a few miles from where we lived. Even as a wannabe hip teenager, I fell in love with the house and its grounds.
While I was fascinated by the Regency mansion itself, some of my happiest early memories come from walking with my friends on the 200-acre estate or along the idyllic banks of the River Tern, escaping our parents.
Later, when I had my own children, it was another Trust property that became my favourite.We were frequent visitors to the Trust’s Wimpole Estate near Cambridge and its brilliant rare breed centre, Home Farm.
It’s a working farm with the most incredible animals, including traditional shire horses and all sorts of old-fashioned and endangered breeds of pigs, sheep and goats.That was 30 years ago, when my kids were toddlers.
Now I’m 67 and I have grandchildren and, when they come to stay, we do it all again. Pigs still go down a storm, even with the slightly more sophisticated threeyear-olds of the 21st century.
Both Attingham and Wimpole were originally stately homes. In some ways, they are very much what people might, typically, associate with the National Trust: fabulous buildings once owned by the aristocracy. Now, I’m a sucker for stately homes. But both estates are also so much more than that. I’d even argue there is no typical National Trust property.
THE Trust’s vision of what should be preserved for the nation has become so much wider during its 127 years – lakeland, forests and coastline, fantastic bits of the English, Welsh and Northern Irish countryside with not a stately home in sight.
And even in the stately homes, it’s not just about the posh “upstairs”, they are just as interested in shining a spotlight on the servants and their quarters, the estate workers, the locals – the broad communities of ordinary folk who kept these incredible buildings running.
Today, you’re not just going to admire m’lord.You’re going to think about what the butler did.That’s been one of the big
changes the Trust has made in my lifetime.
The Trust today is all about preservation and conservation and enjoyment – they’re especially good at that – which goes way beyond many people’s expectations.
As a classicist, I must point out that they own one of the most amazing Roman villas in the country at Chedworth in Glos, where you can see fantastic mosaics in a beautiful Cotswolds setting.
They own the ancient stone circle at Avebury near Stonehenge and the Cerne
Giant, the 55-metre-high nude male who overlooks the village of Cerne Abbas in Dorset.
They preserve art deco pads, the modernist home of architect Erno Goldfinger, who helped build London’s skyline (and inspired a James Bond baddie), stretches of Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland and even a factory or two.
Other countries attempt to copy what the Trust has done. I have friends who are trying to conserve Italy’s heritage.Would you believe that they need to? Sadly, they jolly well do – and they look to the Trust for inspiration.
When it started, perhaps it was slightly patronising in a middle-class way, maybe a bit of a do-gooder. Today it’s saying: this is the National Trust, this is something for everybody.
Whether you’re a nature lover and want to walk up mountains or, like me, prefer a more gentle ramble.Whether you’re an adult or a child, a parent or a dependent. Old or young. Black or white.Ablebodied or differently abled. Or you just like the cakes.
Without the Trust, we’d be losing a lot we wouldn’t want to lose – some of which we wouldn’t know we had lost until it had already gone. Of course, people disagree and there’s all sorts of conflicts about what you should preserve and how.
But that’s all for the good. If people do argue around some of the things the Trust does, it’s because we’re interested and because what we preserve, and how, matters to us.
Yes, history and heritage changes.And what we want to preserve and recognise changes. But the National Trust has been here for more than a century, and let’s hope it is here for many centuries to come.