Wallington House and Langdale Valley: The Trevelyan Family’s Enduring Legacy

On its 100 anniversary, Laura Trevelyan, BBC anchor/correspondent and Royal Oak board member, will lecture on her family’s great gift to the National Trust and her family’s legacy. Laura’s great-grandfather, the celebrated historian George Macaulay Trevelyan, loved nature and was an advocate for the public’s right to access green spaces. He donated much of the Langdale Valley in the Lake District to the National Trust in 1920.

Trevelyan’s example helped persuaded his brother, politician Sir Charles Trevelyan, to donate the family seat of Wallington, a Palladian style country house in Northumberland owned by the family since the late 18th century, to the Trust in 1941. In fact, the family could ill afford to keep up the expensive property and donated it without an endowment! Join Royal Oak as Ms. Trevelyan talks about her family’s history, their estate, and their incredible legacy to the National Trust.

The South or Garden front of Wallington in Northumberland. A William and Mary two-storey courtyard house of c. 1688, family home of the Trevelyans.

Laura Trevelyan

Laura Trevelyan is a BBC anchor and correspondent for BBC World News America based in New York City. She was a political correspondent for BBC News in London from 1999 until her move the US to cover the 2004 presidential election. From May 2006-2009 she covered the United Nations for the BBC and became a BBC correspondent from 2009-2012 covering everything from the row over the proposed mosque at Ground Zero, to Haiti’s cholera epidemic. Ms. Trevelyan’s book A Very British Family: The Trevelyans and Their World (2006) explores the history of her family including Sir Charles Trevelyan, 1st Baronet, of whom she is a descendant. Her second book, The Winchester: The Gun That Built An American Dynasty, explores the family behind America’s most famous firearm and was released in September 2016.