The National Trust owns and opens around 500 historic houses and gardens, over 780 miles of coastline and more than 250,000 hectares of land. With over five million members it is the largest membership organisation in Britain — more than every political party put together, several times over.
Founded to stop development
Three Victorians founded it in 1895: Octavia Hill, a housing reformer who campaigned for open space for the urban poor; Sir Robert Hunter, a solicitor who had fought to save commons from enclosure; and Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley, a Lake District clergyman appalled by unchecked building.
The founding purpose was preservation of “places of historic interest or natural beauty” for the nation, and the first property acquired was a small clifftop meadow in Wales.
Country houses came later. The Trust’s Country Houses Scheme from 1937 allowed families crippled by death duties to hand over a house and its contents in exchange for continued residence — which is why a great many Trust properties still have a member of the original family living in a wing.
Inalienable land
The Trust’s most unusual power, granted by its own Acts of Parliament. It may declare land inalienable, meaning it cannot be sold, mortgaged or compulsorily purchased without Parliament passing a specific Act to override it.
No other British charity has anything like this. It is the reason Trust coastline stays undeveloped permanently, and it has defeated proposed roads and developments outright.
Neptune, launched in 1965, is the coastal campaign — the Trust has acquired around 780 miles of shoreline under it, roughly a tenth of the coast of England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
What membership gets you
Free entry and parking at all properties, which is why so many British households have it. The card pays for itself in three or four visits, and a very large number of British weekends consist of a Trust house, a walk in the grounds, and a scone in the tea room.
The tea rooms and second-hand bookshops are a genuine part of the appeal and a substantial part of the income.
Beatrix Potter
The single largest benefactor of the Lake District. The author of Peter Rabbit used her royalties to buy farmland, became a serious Herdwick sheep breeder, and left the Trust over 4,000 acres and fifteen working farms on her death in 1943 — with the condition that the farms continue to be farmed and the Herdwick flocks maintained.
That bequest is a large part of why the central Lake District was never developed.
The arguments
The Trust has been through a noisy period. A 2020 report examining its properties’ links to colonialism and slavery — including which houses were built on fortunes from the slave trade — produced a fierce backlash from parts of the membership and press, a pressure group formed to contest the leadership, and several contested AGM votes.
The Trust’s position was that stating documented historical facts about its own buildings is straightforwardly part of its job. The row has largely subsided, and membership did not materially fall.
Not English Heritage
Constantly confused. English Heritage looks after the state-owned collection of ruins and monuments; the National Trust is a private charity owning houses, gardens and land. Memberships are separate, with some reciprocal access.