Visitors explore the garden at Hill Top, Cumbria
Have you heard about our first celebrity supporter, or how we saved a rare butterfly from extinction? From our unusual founders to our red squirrel rangers, here are ten curious facts about our past and present.
1. We’re the brainchild of a social reformer, a priest and a lawyer
In 1895, they came together to found the National Trust. Octavia Hill, Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley and Sir Robert Hunter believed in the importance of historic places and green spaces, and fought to preserve them for everyone’s ‘enjoyment, refreshment and rest’. Those values are still at the heart of everything we do.
2. We bought the first National Trust house for just £10
That’s about £600 in today’s money. We saved Alfriston Clergy House from being demolished in 1896, and restored it to its former glory. You can explore a little slice of history at this thatched, medieval meeting-house in East Sussex, with views over the River Cuckmere.
One of our most popular places, Stourhead Wiltshire
3. We look after places now and for ever
When a place is donated to the National Trust, it’s in our care forever, for everyone to enjoy. Acts of Parliament have helped us make sure that forever means forever – private land and houses left to us by former owners can never be sold.
4. Beatrix Potter was one of our biggest supporters
The success of Peter Rabbit, Jemima Puddle-Duck and friends helped her donate thousands of acres of countryside and 14 working farms to the National Trust. We also look after her seventeenth century farmhouse, Hill Top in Cumbria, where you can step into the pages of her famous children’s books.
Crown Bar, Belfast
5. We’re landlords for entire villages, pubs and a Regency playhouse
Alongside the historic houses, mills, castles, gardens, archaeological remains, coastline, forests, woods and other wild spaces we look after, you might find a few surprises. Like 35 atmospheric pubs, the Theatre Royal in Bury St Edmunds and Chiddingstone, a Tudor village in Kent. We help them thrive as places for people to visit, live and work.
6. We’ve got enough members to fill a small country
Over 4.5 million people and counting are National Trust members. That’s more than the entire population of Croatia. Membership gives free access to over 500 special places and helps us restore and protect them for the future.
7. Our volunteers would pack out the Olympic Stadium
We couldn’t do what we do without our 60,000 volunteers. From gardeners to guides, toad patrollers to costume designers, they donate their skills and passion – and more than three million hours of their time each year.
Our most popular attraction, Giant’s Causeway
8. We’re a rare bat’s best friend
We work to protect all kinds of endangered wildlife. You can find the barbastelle bat, and 17 other bat species, roosting in the buildings and woodland we look after. We’ve reintroduced a butterfly once extinct in the UK, the Large Blue, and with the help of volunteer rangers, red squirrels are thriving in habitats like Aira Force in the Lake District.
9. We grow and serve 18th century vegetables
White icicle radishes and prickly cucumbers appear on the menu at Attingham Park’s Carriage House Café, fresh from the kitchen garden. It’s just one of the places where we conserve the natural and cultural heritage of our gardens and orchards, and give our visitors a taste of seasonal, sustainable food.
10. Our most popular attraction is Finn McCool’s crossing
588,000 people visited the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland in 2015. Enormous basalt columns stretch into the sea, said to be built by an Irish giant, Finn McCool, to fight his Scottish nemesis. It’s the busiest place we look after, followed by Stourhead house and gardens on the Wiltshire Downs.
