Future of fire-wrecked mansion fans flames of National Trust rebellion
Ben Ellery, Ali Mitib | The Times | 23 September 2023
When Clandon Park House was built more than 200 years ago, it was an extraordinary project that resulted in what is considered by many to be an architectural masterpiece.
Now, after a fire ripped through its stunning marble hall and magnificent plasterwork ceilings in 2015, the mansion, near Guildford, Surrey, has become the latest front in a battle over the future of the National Trust.
The charity wants to preserve it as a ruin but Restore Trust, a protest group of National Trust members, believes the decision is the latest example of the organisation failing in its values of pre-serving the nation's greatest buildings.
The splinter group has raised a motion ahead of the organisation's annual meeting in November calling for a full restoration of the mansion's interior.
In what is likely to be a volatile meeting, the group has also put forward a motion calling for the abolition of a voting mechanism which it says is designed to sideline members who disagree with the leadership.
The group has endorsed a slate of five candidates, including Lord Sumption, a former Supreme Court justice, who it says are representative of its views. They will be up for selection for the charity's council at the meeting.
The National Trust was shaken two years ago when the protest group was formed in response to an internal report linking 93 of its properties to racism. The group has since raised more than group £100,000 from its members. The charity, which has 5.4 million members, has faced anger over a number of decisions that have led to accusations that it is following a "woke agenda", including by producing a report that linked Winston Churchill to colonialism and slavery.
The Times can disclose that a number of signs which make references to slavery have since been put up in several of the trust's buildings.
Following the Clandon fire, the trust had pledged to restore the grade I listed house to its original condition. However, it has since backtracked. Instead it is proposing to use a £63 million insurance payout to restore only the exterior and put a glass ceiling on the building.
Costs for a full restoration were never published but would have run into the tens of millions of pounds. Latest accounts show the charity has unrestricted reserves of £366 million.
This week the National Trust's annual report showed that its investment portfolio fell by £49 million to £1.6 billion in the past year after it was partly moved into the control of eco-friendly wealth managers.
Cornelia van der Poll, who chairs Restore Trust, said: "Preserving the inside of Clandon as a ruin doesn't make sense on any level. The point of the building is its fantastic stucco interior. The marble hall was the centrepiece, and the ceiling was magnificent. I appreciate money does not grow on trees but it can be raised.
"Putting in a glass house or a cafe is a gimmick, it's not [then] a historic house. It crystallises what is going wrong at the National Trust. What we're seeing is a wobble in confidence. The wobble comes from the top. We have heard that people at the top are not enthusiastic about historic houses. We need a belief in the mission to keep these historic houses as an asset for the nation."
Restore Trust has accused, the National Trust of introducing a voting mechanism for the annual meeting which "undemocratic". Last year the trust launched a "quick vote" system, which allows members to vote for candidates and motions recommended by the leadership with a button.
A spokeswoman said: "Quick vote was introduced in response to member feedback and having taken advice from Civica Election Services on standard practice arrangements at large member organisations. Members are free not to use quick vote for either council nominations or member resolutions, but given that this option was chosen by over a third of members in last year's AGM, we do not wish to take it away." The trust's approach has evolved in response to expert assessment. The extent of loss within the house is so great that restoration is only possible in the very significant Speaker's Parlour. 'Restoration, or more accurately re-creation, elsewhere would not be a valuable act of preservation.
"The National Trust shares broad histories of the places in its care, built on research into both well-known and lesser-known aspects of history, including associations with slavery and colonialism. We will continue to share our understanding of slavery and colonialism where it's relevant and it increases understanding of context."
Rather than reading the campaign statements of the 37 council candidates for the five vacancies and making a decision, pushing the quick-vote button will automatically vote for the five candidates endorsed by the leadership. Restore Trust said it was introduced in the wake of the pressure group's formation in order to stifle its influence.
Sumption, who has been endorsed by Restore Trust, was not interviewed by the charity's nominations committee.
He is a historian of the Hundred Years' War and has restored an 18th-century house in London and a French castle.
The other candidates endorsed by Restore Trust are Philip Gibbs, Andrew Gimson, Violet Manners and Philip Merricks, a life National Trust member for 30 years and the only farmer in the UK accredited by Natural England to manage national nature reserves. He was chairman of the council of the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group. Manners said: "The trust has become distracted by a political agenda that detracts from its mission... the trust must not view its history through the political lens of today when conserving the past."
Zewditu Gebreyohanes, director of Restore Trust, said: "We are going from strength to strength but quick vote means however much success we have, it will really be an uphill struggle. The trust has become more concerned with commercialisation and gratuitously introducing explanations of racism."
In 2020, Hilary McGrady, the director-general, said the National Trust had been silent for too long on identifying the historic connections its properties had with slavery and colonialism.
The following year she denied claims that she was "woke" and said the timing of the report into racism had been a "mistake" because it became conflated with the Black Lives Matter protests.
Signs introduced by the charity to its properties make reference to racism. At Upton House, in Banbury, Oxfordshire, one has been placed next to a Sèvres bowl, cup and saucer. The text refers to the image on the porcelain of sailors unloading cargo from a ship, and talks about how the shipping trade was underpinned by slavery. It makes no reference to who produced the items, who they were for or their quality.
