A queer approach to the history of the National Trust both enriches and complicates the story of its origins. Despite it being founded in 1895 to preserve places of ‘historic interest’ as well as ‘natural beauty’, there is now a widespread belief that the organisation started taking a serious interest in architecture only in the 1930s, when it began systematically to acquire country houses. The true importance of historic buildings to its early history is made plain by an examination of the queer networks that link the fledgling organisation to the Arts and Crafts movement, with which it shared so many late-Victorian socially progressive ideals. This talk will focus on two key Arts and Crafts architects, C.R. Ashbee, an early member of the National Trust’s committee, and Philip Webb, two of whose major houses, Red House and Standen, are owned by the National Trust. It will seek to bring a queer critique to the puritanism of the values that lay behind the organisation’s mission to bring beauty to the urban working classes and will reflect on the way a queer understanding of its origins undermines the binary of ‘historic interest’ and ‘natural beauty’ – a binary that has had consequences that remain evident in the National Trust’s public image today.
Speaker Bio
Michael Hall is a former architectural editor of Country Life, editor of Apollo and editor of The Burlington Magazine. He has published widely on 19th-century architecture and design, the Gothic revival and the history of collecting. His book A Queer Inheritance: Alternative Histories in the National Trust will be published by Bloomsbury on 5 February.
Location
This SAHGB - IHR seminar will be a hybrid event, taking place online and in person at the Institute of Historical Research, N304 (3rd Floor, North Block of Senate House, Malet St, London WC1E 7HU).
Registration
Register below or via email to website@sahgb.org.uk.
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