Untold LGBTQ stories of the National Trust
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In 1895, when the National Trust was founded, same-sex acts of what was called gross indecency were still illegal in Britain. And yet, the trust had connections to queer individuals from its very outset. In this episode of the History Extra podcast, Charlotte Vosper chats to Michael Hall about his new book, A Queer Inheritance, Alternative Histories of the National Trust, to find out more. In Queer Inheritance, you explore histories of sexual difference in connection to the National Trust. What drew you to that history and those stories?
That goes back quite a long way. For quite a few years I worked for Country Life magazine, which, as you probably know, every week it publishes an article about a country house, and I was much younger then, and I was employed to write some of those articles. And I began with actually one of the houses I mention in the book, which is Packwood in Warwickshire, which was acquired by an industrialist from Birmingham for his son, really, to do up as a sort of hobby and collect old furniture for. And it did strike me that he had this house, but he never got married.
He lived there for many years and all he seemed to care about was his collection and and and entertaining. So the idea that somebody might be a bachelor, do up a house, and then give it to the National Trust to look after forever seemed quite intriguing, but I didn't really realize there was a sort of pattern to it until I did a similar article on Anglesey Abbey. And that made me realize that there was a story about the National Trust which hadn't really quite been told. I'd been a member of the National Trust since 1979, I think, so quite a long way back, but I've never worked for the National Trust.
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