SAYING ANCIENT HOUSES

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21256, 30 August 1934, Page 15

SAYING ANCIENT HOUSES

♦ I EXEMPTION FROM DEATH! DUTIES SUGGESTED MOST LIKELY TO liE LOST LONDON, July 19. The suggestion that the National Trust lor Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty should extend its protecting arm to the historic houses was made by Lord Lothian at the annual meeting of the trust, in the Inner Temple, yesterday. Having declared that, owing to heavy taxation, and particularly to death duties, most of these houses were under sentence of death, he continued: "I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that within a generation hardly any of the larger historic houses of Britain, save, perhaps, a few.in the neighbourhood of London, will be lived in by the families who created them." If the old order passed away, was it not possible, he asked, to preserve for the joy and edification of posterity the peculiar beauties it cfeated? A list had been prepared of G39 houses, each of which was, at any rate in part, at least 100 years old, of definite historic or architectural merit, and suitably maintained and furnished as a dwelling-house. Of these, 57 might be described as "big" houses, such as Knole, Hatfield. Haddon Hall, Castle Howard and Blenheim, having 20 or more bedrooms and a considerable park. If these houses were to be preserved they must, save perhaps for a few palaces, be maintained for the uses for which they were designed. Increasingly, the old families would be unable to live in their ancestral homes, and the real task would be to find new tenants who would respect the tradition of beauty. Lord Lothian suggested that the Treasury might be induced to treat these houses on the same basis on which it now treated their contents, for such articles as pictures, jewellery, and furniture, if of "national, scientific, historic, or artistic interest," were exempted from death duties unless thev were sold. "While such measures will help, especially in the case of the smaller houses, there is bound to be a steady procession of these historic dwellingplaces coming on the market in the future. "What is to happen to these, and especially to the big houses, the Knoles and Castle Howards, which cannot possibly remain for long in the possession and occupation of the famines which created them? "There is onlv one remedy. That is that before the old fortunes are remorselessly transferred to the Exchequer we should consider in time whether we can find new tenants and appropriate uses for them. National Trust as Landlord "Unless we face this situation now, within a very few years the big houses, at least, will be stripped of their contents, the roofs will be taken off to escape rates, the gardens will run to weeds, and the parks will become the prey of the speculative builder, who sees site value in proximity to an historic ruin. "What matters is that these houses, except perhaps the most monumental, should be lived in by people who care for them, and are prepared to make them not merely private homes, but places of hospitality and converse for those engaged in politics, in literature, and the arts, or in some aspect of local or international life. I believe that if a body like the National Trust were willing to equip itself to become a landlord on an ampler scale, it would gradually draw within its orbit quite a large number of historic furnished houses."