Marjorie Yue

The National Trust story began in 1895 when its founders snapped up the “tiny but beautiful” Alfriston Clergy House in East Sussex for a tenner to save their first property from demolition. Tomorrow marks the 125th anniversary of the conservation charity which steadfastly continues its mission to protect the nation’s heritage. Here’s our 10 picks from 500 historic houses, castles and gardens currently in its wonderful care...

The Mansion House and its acres of parkland were the home of the Coventry family from the 16th century to the late 1940s.

Keen for Croome Court to be at the cutting edge of taste and design, the sixth earl hired craftsmen and artists to transform the house into the fashionable Palladian style of the day.

The earl also gave Capability Brown his first big commission – to create one of the grandest of English landscapes “out of a morass”.

So pleased was he with the parkland and its temples and follies that some years later the earl built a monument to his gardener friend.

In 1801 Croome was ranked second only to Kew for its botanical diversity. Today, on lease to the Trust and carrying on the earl’s legacy of encouraging new talent, the Mansion’s rooms are used to showcase exhibitions.

■ nationaltrust.org.uk/croome

The cloisters of the 13th-century Abbey and the quintessentially English village of Lacock have had many starring roles on both the big and small screen, most famously in BBC dramas Pride and Prejudice and Wolf Hall, and two of the Harry Potter movies.

The Abbey is also home to the Fox Talbot Museum, dedicated to the inventor of photography, William Henry Fox Talbot. His snap of one of the Abbey windows at his home in 1835 is the world’s earliest surviving negative.

The formal rose garden was created by Talbot’s mother Lady Elizabeth together with the Gothic summerhouse. In 1944 his granddaughter, Matilda, gifted the Abbey to the Trust.

■ nationaltrust.org.uk/lacock-abbeyfox-talbot-museum-and-village