NT property origins
In regard to your story about the National Trust (NT) identifying 29 of its sites as profiting from Slavery Abolition Act compensation (November issue), the NT manages all the properties in its care, the aim being to maintain them in as good condition as possible so that we may visit them to get an idea of how the original inhabitants, above and below stairs, lived.
Many of the properties will have come into NT managership as part of a deathduty arrangement agreed with the government of the day, in effect to save them as gems of their time for future generations to enjoy. It is not the business of the NT to become judge and juror of the origins of its properties. These properties could have come to the NT as a result of, say, marriages to wealthy heiresses, gifts from Royalty or successful factory owners during the industrial revolution, former estates of a dissolved monastery… the potential supposed grievances are endless.
Jill McCallum, Olney