The National Trust should act its age

Calvin Po has a most depressing but interesting Critic piece on what the increasingly ghastly National Trust has done to Sudbury Hall in Derbyshire. It’s years since we were there, but the infantilism had already taken root. We’ll never go back.

The National Trust should act its age

Our main heritage conservation charity wants to be down with the kids

I’ve got a soft spot for fine plasterwork. In the century since Adolf Loos’ modernist rallying cry, “ornament is crime”, it has served as a convenient figleaf for naked walls and ceilings, and a lack of imagination in our buildings. Thankfully, the decorative arts still survive in Britain’s historic homes. For a particularly sumptuous example, an acquaintance suggested a visit to the National Trust’s Sudbury Hall, in Derbyshire.

The first challenge was finding the place. Searching information on the National Trust website, I could only find “The Children’s Country House at Sudbury”. I had to double-check it was the same property. The rebrand turned out to be part of the Trust’s “renovation” initiated during lockdown. The target market is now the littlest demographic and, as a new slogan proclaims, it’s all about “having fun with history”.

The whole piece is well worth reading as a striking example of how dismally inept the National Trust can be when it really tries. It has a remarkable sixth-form assurance whenever it substitutes fashionable ideology for a more mature but more difficult task of telling it as it was. 

The final straw for me was the thoughtless treatment of the Long Gallery. Undoubtedly the pinnacle of the house’s architectural drama, it spans the entire 138-foot length of both of Sudbury’s wings. Yet it was interrupted by a “selfie booth” for children to dress up as figures in the family portraits that punctuate the gallery.

The Vernon portraits have not been spared humiliation either: under each one, the poet-playwright Toby Campion has added speech bubbles with quips such as: “Looks like they’ve got me dressed in silk sheets. At least it makes me look classy”. The captions are banal and unfunny. Worse, this infantile guff was paid for with public money from the Arts Council. The children paid little of it any attention.