“Yes, you’re right, darling, there weren’t any horses in the stables and it was very disappointing.” So comes the rallying call of the National Trust parent – North Face backpack on shoulders, golden cockapoo on lead, aggrieved child in tow – on a balmy afternoon slap-bang in the middle of the summer holidays.
I could have been at any number of the National Trust’s 500-odd historic sites. The management team behind this property empire long ago noticed that the courtyards of old mews where horses were once fed carrots are perfect settings for cafés serving carrot cake – though sadly the horses do need to be removed first. Nor would it be narrowing it down much to note the church bell-ringers practising in the distance, or the drone of light aircraft overhead, or the dozens of visitors wending their way from the overfilled car park. Dogs of all varieties abound, outnumbered only by toddlers on brightly coloured scooters. When the house itself emerged at the top of a hill, a fairy-tale concoction of spiralling towers in honeyed Bath stone, we were greeted to a vista that hasn’t changed in a century and a half – save the orange rucksacks and Bugaboos.
I was at Waddesdon Manor near Aylesbury, in the heart of Buckinghamshire. This is the erstwhile seat of the Rothschild family, who dominated this corner of England to the extent that the Victorians nicknamed the surrounding area “Rothschildshire”. It is one of the National Trust’s most frequently visited venues, evoking as it does the quintessential old English stately home. Which is interesting, because it was built less than 150 years ago and was designed to look French.
Indeed, the National Trust initially rejected the offer to acquire Waddesdon in 1945, with trustees “uneasy about its overtly French architectural character”. I learned this courtesy of a National Trust information sign, and can’t quite shake the impression that whoever wrote it is vestigially proud of this fact. Though not as proud as whoever wrote the notice explaining that the house’s front lawn is being torn up to instal heat pumps and transform the property’s heating “to an entirely renewable energy source…[saving] approximately 124 tonnes of CO2 every year”. That’s the National Trust: Mr Facing-Both-Ways, tending its responsibilities to the past and the future, and pleasing no one in the process.
The trust was founded in 1895 with the seemingly uncontroversial purpose to “promote the permanent preservation for the benefit of the nation of lands and tenements (including buildings) of beauty or historic interest”. It has since grown into something of a behemoth – the UK’s second-largest membership organisation after the National Union of Students, with over five million members – and one of the country’s largest landowners, at almost 600,000 acres. In recent years it has become a battleground in Britain’s culture wars. Vicious, venomous debates have greeted every internal development, from the extent to which monuments should recognise historical links to slavery, to the “woke scones” scandal of 2024 – prompting the trust to respond that, while its recipe was indeed now vegan, customers could still enjoy them with cream.
The latest row concerns a partnership with Pokémon, which the National Trust describes as a means to “offer a powerful opportunity to connect with families and younger audiences in fresh ways”. Not everyone was a fan (“catastrophic dumbing-down” was the phrase used by one critic). But, judging from the excited bouncing of my stepchildren when the prospect of partying with Pikachu after a mandatory historical tour was mooted, opinion is very much divided.
Waddesdon has sidestepped Pokémon discourse (only a selection of venues are participating) but is determinedly doing its bit to lure the nation’s listless children to its grounds. Its woodland adventure playground has just been revamped to include a castle, itself of near-Rothschildian proportions. It is also fully signed up to the National Trust’s annual “summer of play” – which savvy parents have long translated as “skip service station hell and stop off here, and let the kids run around while you munch on a vegan scone”.
This evident focus on outdoor entertainment was perhaps why, when it came to the interiors of the manor, children were largely absent – other than an enthusiastic one-year-old who was learning to crawl, at alarming speed, up one of the luxuriantly carpeted spiral staircases. Still, even here the National Trust has made an effort to engage younger visitors. A sign on an ornate writing desk with secret compartments asked, “What things might the owner have put in them?… What would you hide in them (we promise not to tell)?” Lest you find this patronisingly twee, another display invited budding conservationists to consider, “How do you care for a house like this?” – a prescient move to avoid future staff shortages.
For the grown-ups, the treasures were more readily apparent. Lavish paintings by Reynolds and Gainsborough, a gilded grand piano, a desk made for Marie Antoinette. The fact many of these artefacts predate the house and originated abroad do not stop them falling into the category of “English heritage”. That goes for the Rothschilds themselves. A special exhibition wove the story of this influential German Jewish family throughout Britain’s history. One Rothschild cousin loaned the British government gold to fund the final campaigns of the Napoleonic Wars; another became the first Jewish MP in 1847. During the First World War, the gardeners’ accommodation at Waddesdon was used to house German prisoners. In the Second World War, the house became a refuge for children evacuated from London to escape the Blitz.
There is a story here about Britain’s connection to immigrant experiences, the messy blurring of public and private through the ages, the desire to concoct identities and manufacture traditions that can be imported from somewhere else. What has been conserved at Waddesdon isn’t just a beautiful house; the estate is also a snapshot of a nation striving simultaneously to retain and reinvent itself, with all the contradictions that entails. The house is French. The family are German. The history is unashamedly British. Nor is the transfer all one way. Last year, the French minister for culture proposed establishing a National Trust à la française. This did not meet with universal approval. France’s aversion to monarchy (ultimately responsible for Marie Antoinette’s desk ending up in Buckinghamshire) apparently doesn’t vibe with the notion of commoners volunteering much of their time to look after castles and palaces. According to Julien Lacaze, president of France’s Sites & Monuments group: “The state dreams of the English model where villagers act as guides and are proud of it. That’s not compatible in France.”
Which makes one wonder how peculiar this national hobby is. Medieval pilgrims travelled to holy sites for absolution; the English travel to sites of historical interest for reasons more elusive still. Is it a radical or a reactionary act? The trust is clearly a “conservative” institution, preserving and protecting. And yet to visit its properties can be sold as a reclamation, seizing private monuments for the commons. The theoretically minded visitor can always take Raymond Williams’s advice about country-house viewing: “Think it through as labour and see how long and systematic the exploitation and seizure must have been to rear that many houses, on that scale.”
Back in Rothschildshire, the more prosaic incompatibilities of the National Trust were on full display. Historied out, I wandered down to the horseless stables and was horrified to find the café had completely run out of woke scones. Now that’s a scandal.
[Further reading: I flew to Wetherspoons Alicante for a pint]
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This article appears in the 02 Sep 2026 issue of the New Statesman, Meet Generation Screwed
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