Restoring Trust

Preservation

The historic houses and rural estates in the care of the National Trust provide an essential temporary respite from cities and suburbs for many in the UK, including its over five million members. When the charity celebrated its centenary in 1995 a grateful nation looked back on its work: the rescue and conservation of over 200 country houses and other historic buildings, and swathes of countryside and coast. Without the National Trust, these tranquil landscapes would have made way for the inevitable railways, housing estates and caravan parks.

On that occasion Merlin Waterson published a celebratory book in which he looked back on this achievement and warned: 'If ever the Trust is deflected from protecting individual places of historic interest and natural beauty, then it will have betrayed its fundamental objectives. If it becomes preoccupied with a sense of being some great national institution, it will be in danger of making a fool of itself.’ Those words seem prophetic as this year’s ‘Ten-Year Plan’ marking the charity’s 130th anniversary expresses ambitions which look very much like claims to the status of great national institution: ‘Inspire Millions’, ‘End Unequal Access’ and ‘Restore nature: not just on National Trust land, but everywhere’.

Cultural Role

In the latter half of the twentieth century, as the National Trust took on more and more houses from families who could not pay punitive inheritance taxes, it built a reputation as a serious conservation powerhouse. However, in 2020 a strategy document proposing to ‘dial down’ its role as a ‘major national cultural institution’ was leaked to The Times, causing consternation. Under the cover of Covid a number of curators were made redundant and curator roles were downgraded. No longer was the National Trust staffed by a substantial cohort of heritage professionals with a deep knowledge of buildings and collections. Instead, curator posts were redefined as managing the ‘visitor experience’.

Another report made a far bigger splash. The ‘Interim Report on the Connections between Colonialism and Properties now in the Care of the National Trust, Including Links with Historic Slavery’, was hastily published in 2020 following the success of the Black Lives Matter movement and billed as part of the ‘Colonial Countryside Project’. The project set up a straw man argument that people who visit country houses for recreation give no thought to the wider social context of these houses. Corinne Fowler, professor of postcolonial literature and co-author of the report, said at the time:

‘These places are, and were always intended to be, a veneer, an idyllic façade. And we have fallen for it.’

The National Trust’s report, funded by the Arts Council and the Heritage Lottery Fund, failed to recognise visitors’ nuanced attitudes to the past and was not based on careful scholarship.

When discussing the report on the Today Programme on Radio 4, Sir Simon Jenkins, former Chairman of the National Trust, said: ‘I think gamma minus is probably what I’d give it… I think they got, frankly, a dud group of people to do it.’

The report and the associated Colonial Countryside Project may seem naïve, but it has serious consequences, not least the indoctrination of children who participated in the project. Prof. Fowler envisaged that these children would educate elderly volunteers, saying:

‘Only those children, I believe, have the power to reach a whole army of volunteers who are not yet familiar with this history, who would be willing, if they think like grandparents, to relate to the children, to learn in a kind of reverse mentoring relationship, what those colonial connections actually are for each property’. National Trust volunteers are typically older people, generally well-informed and sophisticated and often retired from prestigious careers.'

This caricature of them as kindly but ignorant oldies could have been calculated to alienate them in large numbers. Indeed, their numbers have declined by a fifth from 2020 to 2024 and many have said that they felt belittled and patronised.

Modern Shibboleths

Children visiting Kedleston Hall in Derbyshire were shown a portrait of Lord Curzon and invited to write poems denigrating him as arrogant and cruel. The children were not told about Curzon’s pioneering work on nature conservation, as Viceroy of India, or his deep interest in Indian art, craft and architecture and his many projects to restore historic buildings. The collection which he gave to the Victoria and Albert Museum and which is now displayed at Kedleston was termed ‘spoils’, even though he commissioned and bought many of the objects with the intention of encouraging traditional crafts.

The theme of slavery is prominent throughout Dyrham Park in Gloucestershire, built by William Blathwayt, who was auditor of colonial revenues for Charles II, James II and William and Mary. Displays point out that sugar and cocoa were used by the family. In one room there is a pair of Venetian-style blackamoor figures kneeling and supporting dishes in an Atlas-like pose. They are dressed in rich brocade tunics and wear gold earrings, but also metal collars and chains round their ankles. The guidebook tells us that they are ‘emotive’, that they are ‘symbols of slavery’ and that Blathwayt’s uncle, who purchased the stands, was ‘associated’ with the Royal African Company (though we are not told how) and that he ‘perhaps saw these stands as signifiers of his expertise’ in the slave trade. The description makes assumptions and raises more questions than it answers. Is the claim that Blathwayt’s uncle actually engaged in the slave trade and, if so, how? Where and when were the stands made? Of what material and based on what model? Is it relevant that Barbary corsairs had raided the coasts of Devon and Cornwall for slaves in living memory? The presentation of the house can give the impression that William Blathwayt owned a slave plantation, was involved in a slave trading company, or traded the products of slave estates or, at the very least, had visited the Caribbean. Yet none of these things was the case.

The Clandon House Travesty

The most controversial issue facing the National Trust now is the Grade I-listed Clandon House in Surrey, gutted by fire in 2015. The house was the last surviving complete country house by the distinguished Venetian architect Giacomo Leoni. The red brick exterior is plain, even austere, and is, perhaps unfairly, not much admired, but the exuberantly sculpted stucco interiors by Giuseppe Artari were its distinguishing feature. The Marble Hall was one of the finest eighteenth-century interiors in Europe.

The National Trust reassured the public that an insurance payout of around £66 million would be used to restore the house. A precedent had been set with the much-admired restoration of Uppark in Sussex, which was gutted by fire in 1989 and opened to the public again in 1995. It was announced that the restoration would take Clandon House back to its original 1730s condition, bypassing the subsequent alterations. Going back to Giacomo Leoni’s original conception for the house would be of huge interest to the public and professionals alike.

There was a false start and all went quiet. Then, in 2022 a new scheme was sold to the public as ‘an X-ray vision of a country house laid bare’ with cavernous brick spaces, broken plasterwork and fireplaces sitting in the middle of nowhere, while the National Trust discredited the idea of reconstructing the interiors, dismissing it as ‘replica’ and ‘pastiche’ and claiming that the skills don’t exist.

And yet, Uppark was restored under far less promising circumstances, when a new cohort of sculptors in lime plaster had to be trained from scratch. This time there are well-established firms who would love to take on the task and train apprentices on the job. In France the pessimists were overruled, and Notre Dame Cathedral is back from the fire. Perversely, the National Trust finds itself in a position where it can’t celebrate its own excellent work at Uppark, one of its major triumphs.

What the wider loss of nerve over the past five years has shown is that, however obviously wrong policies or actions are, they cannot be resisted until it is understood why they are wrong. Restore Trust has formulated responses to a number of issues, from bad conservation and presentation to bad management of tenanted properties to the treatment of volunteers and curators to political activism which distracts the charity from carrying out its functions.

In online fora there is a sense of disillusionment, with many contributors having given up membership or intending to do so. We advocate another approach: don’t abandon the National Trust, but use your membership to achieve change. This will not happen overnight, but over time we hope to replace despair that the charity has lost its bearings with the expectation that it can and should do things well for the benefit of the nation again.

Restore Trust is a forum where supporters and friends of the National Trust can come together to discuss their concerns about the future of the charity, and lobby for change.

Cornelia van der Poll

Cornelia van der Poll | Chairman of Restoring Trust Forum | Lecturer in Ancient Greek at Oxford

Find out more