PRESERVE ESTATE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 184, 5 August 1936, Page 7

PRESERVE ESTATE.

I Historic Northumberland Seat For Posterity. LABOUR POLITICIAN'S PLAN. British Official Wireless. (Received 12.30 p.m.) RUGBY, August 4. An interesting scheme for extending the scope of the work of the National Trust for the preservation of places 6f_ historic interest or natural beauty is announced. It results from an arrangement reached between the Trust and Sir Charles Trevelyan, Lord-Lieutenant of Northumberland and President of the Board of Education in the Labour Government. Wallington, a large estate near Morpeth, with a house 250 years old, which has been associated with the Trevelyan . family since 1777, and in which are books and .other relics of Maeaulcv, will, at the death of Sir Charles, pass to the National Trust, which will ensure preservation of the house and its valuable contents and beautiful grounds.

It will provide for access to it by the ■general public, at the same time maintaining its connection with the Trevelyan family's living representatives by allowing them, so long as they wish, toremain as tenants of the trust.

Newspapers comment 011 the scheme as an ingenious manner of preserving against dispersion or unsympathetic development many large estates of historic interest or great beauty, the owners of which are unable to provide confidently for the future owing to the incidence of taxation and death duties.

Sir Charles Trevelyan was first a Liberal M.P., when he resigned his poet as Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education as a protest against Britain's entering the Great War. He was then returned for Labour in 1922 and became Minister of Education in 1929, but again resigned when his bill for raising the school-leaving age was rejected. He said "big Socialist measures" were the only remedy for the depression, and deprccated economy plans. A pamphlet declaration that a better distribution of wealth would cure the world's ills led to a challenge— which was ignored—from a wealthy Tory candidate for his seat, Mr. Alfred •Denville. to give half his fortune to the poor of Newcastle, whereupon the ' challenger would follow suit. Sir Charles inherited over £500,000 from his father, Sir G. .0. Trevelyan, the biographer of Macaulay. Many social aids were introduced by Sir Charles in the management of his Wallington estate.