Today we journeyed about a mile outside of York to the National Trust Regional Office. It was a long and rainy walk, so it was quite nice to be able to sit down and have some tea once we arrived. We met with Lisa VandeDecker, a curator with the NT. She gave us a history of the NT supplemented by a slideshow. Here is a little bit of what we learned.
-NT was founded in 1895 by Octavia Hill, Sir Robert Hunter, and Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley, and was titled “The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty”.
-Their properties are not limited to historic houses, but also coastline, nature preserves, gardens, archaeological sites, and even whole villages.
-The National Trust Act was passed in 1907 and allowed them to hold properties inalienably.
-In 1937 the Country Houses Scheme allowed for the income from surrounding estate lands to be used for the upkeep of the estate, and for families to gift their house to the Trust to avoid paying heavy taxes. These families could continue to live in the house even after it was gifted.
-They are funded mostly by membership (now 3.5 million), as well as benefactors, and donations. They also rely heavily on volunteers.
-Unlike English Heritage, they are a charity independent of the government. However, she could not answer why they bring in English Heritage to manage some of their sites such as Hadrian’s Wall and Rievaulx Terrace, hypothesizing that it might be because EH is better prepared to manage ruin sites.
-The Trust is slowly pushing for their sites to be more autonomous. Also, they are trying to make their sites more relevant and accessible to public through careful exhibit planning.
-In the last ten years there has been a push to allow public to see and participate in the conservation that is taking place at sites.
-As far as the organization, there are 6 regional offices and two country offices (for Wales and Northern Ireland). Curators work for the Conservation Directorate, and manage all sorts of properties. They also advise on acquisitions, organize exhibitions, deal with the paperwork for loans, advise on best practices, and deal with dilemmas relating to conservation/preservation/restoration.
Our time with Lisa was very informative, and it’s a shame we weren’t able to meet with her earlier on in our trip. Also, the Treasurer’s House was the first NT property that I have visited that NT actually runs. It was the same for many of the others as well. All of our previous visits have either been at EH sites, independently run charities like Harewood House, or at NT sites managed by EH. I wish I had a larger body of places for comparison. Unfortunately, there isn’t’ much of anything run by NT in York that is within walking distance (as we have given up the cars now).
There is also really a sense that the properties acquired by the NT really belong to the nation. NT has fundraising drives when a new property that they wish to purchase comes on the market. Without the help of members of the community, NT would not be able to purchase most of these properties.
We are drawing near the end of our trip, and the weather seems to be taking a turn for the worse. We were really lucky with our weather the first three weeks, so I really shouldn’t complain. I am excited to see some sunny weather back in San Diego.
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