Founders , 1898 The National Trust was incorporated on 12 January 1895 as the
National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, which is still the organisation's legal name. The founders were social reformer
Octavia Hill, solicitor Sir
Robert Hunter and clergyman
Hardwicke Rawnsley. In 1876 Hill, together with her sister
Miranda Hill, had set up a society to "diffuse a love of beautiful things among our poor brethren". Named after
John Kyrle, the Kyrle Society campaigned for open spaces for the recreational use of urban dwellers, as well as having decorative, musical, and literary branches. Hunter had been solicitor to the
Commons Preservation Society, while Rawnsley had campaigned for the protection of the
Lake District. The idea of a company with the power to acquire and hold buildings and land had been mooted by Hunter in 1894. In July 1894 a provisional council, headed by Hill, Hunter, Rawnsley and
Hugh Grosvenor, 1st Duke of Westminster met at
Grosvenor House and decided that the company should be named the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty.
Articles of association were submitted to the
Board of Trade and on the Trust was registered under the
Companies Act on 12 January 1895. Its purpose was to "promote the permanent preservation for the benefit of the Nation of lands and tenements (including buildings) of beauty or historic interest".
Early years in 1896. The National Trust acquired its first land in early 1895;
Dinas Oleu, on the clifftop above
Barmouth in Wales, was donated by
Fanny Talbot, a friend of Rawnsley. The trust's first building was acquired the following year;
Alfriston Clergy House, a 14th-century house in the Sussex village of
Alfriston, was bought for £10 and required a further £350 for repairs. In 1907 Hunter drafted the first
National Trust Act, which was passed by
Parliament and gave the trust the power to declare its land inalienable, meaning that it could not be sold without parliamentary approval. In addition, the act enabled the trust to make
by-laws. Further acts followed in 1919, 1937, 1939, 1953, and 1971. In the early days, the trust was concerned primarily with the acquisition (by gift or purchase) of open spaces and a variety of threatened buildings. The buildings were generally of modest size, an exception being
Barrington Court in
Somerset, the trust's first large country house. Two of the sites acquired by the trust in its early years later became nature reserves:
Wicken Fen in
Cambridgeshire and
Blakeney Point in
Norfolk, both purchased with the help of a donation by naturalist and banker
Charles Rothschild.
White Barrow on
Salisbury Plain was the trust's first archaeological monument, purchased in 1909 for £60. By 1914 the trust, operating out of a small office in London, had 725 members and had acquired 63 properties, covering .
Expansion was acquired by the Trust in 1926. In 1920 the National Trust lost the last of its three founders, Rawnsley. The Trust's of land in the Lake District were augmented by gifts in his memory, including part of the Great Wood on
Derwentwater. In 1923, literary critic
John Bailey took over as chairman of the Trust. Under his chairmanship, the Trust saw an increase in funds, membership, and properties. The 1920s saw the acquisition of more archaeological sites, including
Cissbury Ring in
West Sussex, and early buildings, including two medieval castles (
Bodiam Castle in
East Sussex and
Tattershall Castle, Lincolnshire) bequeathed to the Trust by
Lord Curzon. In 1925 the Trust launched a national appeal to buy the
Ashridge Estate in
Hertfordshire, successfully raising a record £80,000. After Bailey's death in 1931,
The Times credited him with helping to build the Trust's strong position and to encourage gifts of countryside and historic places to the nation. The Trust, which already owned a large area of the Lake District, acquired its first piece of land in the
Peak District in 1930. Four years later,
Ilam Hall was presented to the Trust for use as a
youth hostel. The 1930s saw an expansion of the Trust's interest in coastal conservation, with more than thirty small coastal properties in
Devon and
Cornwall alone given to the Trust. In 1934, the Trust acquired its first village,
West Wycombe in
Buckinghamshire, which was donated to the Trust by the
Royal Society of Arts, which had bought it from Sir John Lindsay Dashwood five years previously.
Quarry Bank Mill in
Cheshire was donated to the Trust in 1939 with an estate including the village of
Styal, which had been built for the mill workers by
Samuel Greg. During the 1930s and 1940s, the Trust benefited from the unconventional fundraising tactics of
Ferguson's Gang; a group of women with pseudonyms such as Bill Stickers and Red Biddy who wore disguises and carried out stunts when delivering money to the Trust. Their donations enabled the Trust to purchase various properties including
Shalford Mill, in
Surrey, and
Newtown Old Town Hall, on the
Isle of Wight.
The country house scheme Bailey was followed as chairman of the National Trust by
Lawrence Dundas, 2nd Marquess of Zetland, and in 1936 the Trust set up the Country Houses Committee, with
James Lees-Milne as secretary, to look into ways of preserving country houses and gardens at a time when their owners could no longer afford to maintain them. A country house scheme was set up and the National Trust Acts of 1937 and 1939 facilitated the transfer of estates from private owners to the Trust. The scheme allowed owners to escape
estate duty on their country house and on the endowment which was necessary for the upkeep of the house, while they and their heirs could continue to live in the property, providing the public were allowed some access. The first house offered under the scheme was
Stourhead in Wiltshire, although it was not acquired by the Trust until after the death in 1947 of the owners
Sir Henry and Lady Hoare. The first property to be actually handed over to the Trust under the scheme was a relatively modern house:
Wightwick Manor near
Wolverhampton had been built just fifty years earlier.
Lacock Abbey, also in Wiltshire, was another early acquisition, handed to the Trust by Matilda Talbot (granddaughter of
Henry Fox Talbot) after nearly seven years of negotiations. The house came with the village of
Lacock and an endowment of .
The postwar years After
World War II, the
National Land Fund was set up by the government as a "thank-offering for victory" with the purpose of using money from the sale of surplus war stores to acquire property in the national interest. The scheme also allowed for the transfer to the National Trust of historic houses and land left to the government in payment of estate duty. The first open space acquired by the Trust under the Land scheme was farmland at
Hartsop in the Lake District; the first country house was
Cotehele in Cornwall. Later acquisitions included
Hardwick Hall,
Ickworth House,
Penrhyn Castle and
Sissinghurst Castle Garden. The Land Fund was replaced in 1980 by the
National Heritage Memorial Fund. The work of the Trust was aided by further legislation during this period: the
Town and Country Planning Act 1947 led to greater cooperation between local authorities and the Trust, while the Historic Buildings and Ancient Monuments Act 1953 allowed the Trust to receive government grants for the upkeep and maintenance of historic buildings on the same terms as other owners. A major project, begun in 1959 and completed in 1964, was the restoration of the southern section of the
Stratford-upon-Avon Canal. The Trust was persuaded to take on the scheme by
John Smith and the work was carried out by hundreds of volunteers. Between 1945 and 1965 the Trust, under the chairmanship of
David Lindsay, 28th Earl of Crawford, saw a growth in its membership from 7,850 to 157,581 and growth in its staff from 15 to 450. The area of land owned by the Trust increased from in 1945 to in 1965, with a further covenanted. In May 1945 the Trust's London headquarters had moved to premises in
Queen Anne's Gate.
The Benson Report In 1965 the National Trust launched
Enterprise Neptune, a campaign to acquire and protect stretches of coastline. It raised more than £800,000 in its first year, but also exposed arguments about the Trust's character, management and relationship with post-war mass leisure. The Neptune director, Conrad Rawnsley, a former naval commander and grandson of co-founder
Hardwicke Rawnsley, wanted the campaign's energy and methods extended across the Trust's wider work. Rawnsley was dismissed in 1966 and then led a public reform campaign, arguing that the organisation was too closed, socially narrow and reluctant to provide ordinary visitors with access and facilities. The chairman,
Lord Antrim, accepted that the Trust had become a "self-perpetuating oligarchy", while resisting Rawnsley's view that it should compete with the entertainment industry. Rawnsley's supporters forced an extraordinary general meeting in February 1967. Their reform resolutions were defeated, but the dispute led the Trust's council to appoint an advisory committee on its constitution, organisation and responsibilities. The committee was chaired by the accountant Sir
Henry Benson; its other members were
Len Clark,
Sir William Hayter and
Patrick Gibson. The Benson report, dated December 1968, did not repudiate the Trust's conservation policy, but found that the organisation had outgrown its informal and largely amateur administration. The report recommended a clearer professional chain of command under a director-general, devolution of day-to-day management to regional committees, stronger council oversight of the executive committee, wider voting rights for members, tighter financial control and improved visitor facilities, including refreshments, lavatories and parking, where preservation allowed. The
National Trust Act 1971 gave statutory form to much of the reform. It restructured the council and executive committee, recognised new classes of membership, required proper accounts and annual audit, and widened the Trust's powers to provide public facilities and to charge for some recreational uses. Membership rose from 160,000 in 1968 to 500,000 in 1975, over one million in 1981 and over two million by the time of the Trust's centenary in 1995. Full-time staff increased from 933 in 1968 to 1,488 in 1981, allowing the Trust to employ specialist advisers in conservation, architecture, archaeology and visitor services. The Trust also developed a director of public relations, regional information officers, clearer member communications, tea rooms, shops and event programmes at its properties. In 1984 it set up a separate trading company to run its commercial activities. Gibson retired as chairman in 1986. His successor, Dame Jennifer Jenkins, was the Trust's first female chairman; she had served on the
Historic Buildings Council for England and later co-authored the Trust's centenary history with Patrick James. When the Trust reached its centenary in 1995 it owned or looked after 223 houses, 159 gardens, of open countryside, and of coastline. In the 1990s there was a dispute within the Trust over
stag hunting, which was the subject of debate at annual general meetings. The Trust banned stag hunting on its land in 1997.
Twenty-first century , a Victorian Gothic mansion. In 2002 the National Trust bought its first country house in more than a decade.
Tyntesfield, a
Victorian Gothic mansion in Somerset, was acquired with donations from the
National Heritage Memorial Fund and the
Heritage Lottery Fund as well as members of the public. Three years later, in 2005, the Trust acquired another country house,
Seaton Delaval Hall in Northumberland. In 2007 the bicentenary of the official
abolition of the slave trade, the Trust published the article "Addressing the Past" in its quarterly magazine, examining aspects of the Trust's "hidden history" and finding ways of "reinterpreting some of its properties and collections". Research carried out by the Trust revealed in 2020 that 93, nearly one third, of their houses and gardens had connections with colonialism and historic slavery: "this includes the global slave trades, goods and products of enslaved labour, abolition and protest, and the East India Company". The report attracted controversy and the
Charity Commission opened a regulatory compliance case into the Trust in September 2020 to examine the trustees' decision-making. The Charity Commission concluded that there were no grounds for regulatory action against the Trust. In 2020, the
Dunham Massey Hall sundial statue of "a kneeling African figure clad in leaves carrying the sundial above his head" was removed from its position in front of
Dunham Massey Hall after calls were made for the
removal of statues in Britain with links to the slave trade in the wake of the
murder of George Floyd. Between 2008 and 2013, the National Trust in Devon was defrauded of over £1 million by one of its employees. Building surveyor Roger Bryant was convicted in September 2024 of having submitted false invoices to the Trust and was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison. The fraud had only come to light when the Trust decided to update its procurement procedures in 2013. The
COVID-19 pandemic led to the closure in March 2020 of National Trust houses, shops, and cafes, closely followed by all gated parks and gardens. Parks and gardens started to re-open from June 2020. In 2021 a group of members started a campaign,
Restore Trust, to debate concerns about the future of the charity. At the Trust's 2023 annual general meeting, the Restore Trust Group put up three candidates for the council and two resolutions, but all were rejected by the membership. ==Governance==