Athena writes in Country Life, 13 June 2023, about her delight that Munstead Wood in the Surrey Hills has been purchased by the National Trust:

THE news that the National Trust has bought Munstead Wood in the Surrey Hills should—in Athena’s view—be greeted with rejoicing. Built by the young Edwin Lutyens for Gertrude Jekyll in 1896, Munstead Wood is a small, but outstandingly important house, both in the history of English architecture and of COUNTRY LIFE. This was where the architect’s genius first shone, where the great garden designer lived and worked and where the informal partnership between them was forged.

Munstead Wood (COUNTRY LIFE, January 4) most recently came on the market last year. It would no doubt have found a private purchaser over time, but the legacy of its most recent owners—sir Robert and Lady Clark—is noteworthy. The garden had been divided and largely grassed over after the Second World War. Its bones, however, were revealed by the fall of many trees during the Great Storm of 1987 and the Clarks determined to restore it.

The Clarks were generous in allowing interested groups to see their home, but there was no guarantee that their example would be followed by a new private owner. Another family might not have been so committed to the history of the garden or prepared to employ the gardeners needed to maintain it in the Jekyll style. The Lutyens Trust, founded after the jubilant Lutyens exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in 1981, therefore, led the charge to secure it for the nation.

Step forward the National Trust, which was founded in 1895 by men and women who shared Jekyll’s William Morris-inspired

Here is a chance for the National Trust to show its critics that it is still serious about the country house

values. The purchase price of about £5 million is not particularly large for the organisation, but to that sum must be added the cost of restoration and the endowment necessary for the acquisition. The fact that the house, therefore, was purchased from reserves, without a preliminary fundraising campaign, is both notable and unusual.

The sale nearly fell through when the lawyers realised that the bumpy lane by which the property is reached has no owner. Fortunately, access can be provided by another route, which will have the advantage that the last portion of the approach will be by foot, as Jekyll liked. A car park would be alien to the spirit of the house, but visitors will be able to leave their vehicles at the Trust’s Winkworth Arboretum nearby.