6 Must-See National Trust Properties in the UK

The National Trust and the Scottish National Trust maintain hundreds of properties in the UK. These range from small, historically significant dwellings to large swaths of nature and sprawling former aristocratic estates. In this article, we will look at some must-see country houses. Preserved here are scientific ingenuity, vital cultural heritage, and the work of architects, painters, and sculptors at the top of their professions. Properties from the 18th and 19th centuries in particular remain in the spotlight, in a nation gradually reassessing its memory of the British Empire and its protagonists.

For sheer majesty, nothing can top this Scottish Castle, situated on the Ayrshire cliffs overlooking the Firth of Clyde. The 34th president of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, was a frequent visitor to this clifftop castle. The previous owners, the Kennedy family, donated the house to the independent National Trust for Scotland in 1945. As part of the agreement, Eisenhower was gifted the top floor apartment as a thank-you for his role in Europe’s liberation in World War II. The Kennedy family is one of the oldest clans in Scotland, with a history reaching back to the days of Robert the Bruce at the turn of the 14th century.

This Gothic Revival mansion is one of the most famous projects by the vaunted 18th-century architect, Robert Adam. The centerpiece inside is an oval spiral staircase, twisting through two levels of colonnades, first Corinthian and then Ionic. Elsewhere the Round Drawing Room is set off by the fabulous seafront views from atop this promontory.

A lot of Culzean Castle’s mystique comes from its dramatic location. The surrounding Country Park features three miles of shoreline, with yet more cliffs and cinematic sandy beaches. At the foot of the castle promontory are sizable caves with evidence of human habitation going back to the Neolithic Period.

More sheltered, Culzean’s walled garden dates back some 300 years, and was the setting for horticultural advances in the 18th and 19th century. New stone fruit varieties were cultivated here, along with the Ailsa Craig onion, still common today.

On close to 1,000 acres of woodland and parkland along the River Bure, this estate dates back to Medieval times. Replacing an older house, the current Jacobean Blickling Hall was commissioned by the politician Sir Henry Hobart, in 1616. Within an older Tudor moat, the brick-built mansion is the work of Robert Lyminge, best known for Hatfield House, near London. In 1501 or 1507 the previous house on the estate was the birthplace of Anne Boleyn, the second wife of King Henry VIII.

With curving Flemish gables and ornate moldings around the windows and doorways, the main facade is anchored by an imposing clock tower. Despite appearances, the tower is made from wood, carved and painted to look like stone.

In the mid-18th century, the eminent scholar Sir Richard Ellys left a remarkable collection of historic books and illuminated manuscripts to John Hobart, 1st Earl of Buckinghamshire. He converted the beautiful Long Gallery to house what is one of the most important libraries of its kind in England.

Spanning almost 150 linear feet, the library contains close to 15,000 volumes. Among the most important are the Blickling Homilies, a series of 10th-century Anglo-Saxon sermons. Also here is the Lothian Psalter, dating back to the 8th century and held to be the oldest surviving English translation of the Bible.

Encircling the house is a tapestry of formal gardens, developed over the course of more than 300 years. For instance, the yews on the front lawn have been here since the first half of the 18th century. Behind the house is a parterre with four large beds centered on an 18th-century fountain.

The Victorian inventor and industrialist William Armstrong collaborated with one of Britain’s foremost architects to build himself a country house like no other. An early champion of renewable energy, Armstrong was a prolific inventor whose company built the hydraulic mechanism that powered London’s Tower Bridge.

From 1869, Armstrong teamed up with Richard Norman Shaw to work on his Northumberland estate, crowned by a fairytale half-timbered palace evoking Neuschwanstein. Looking at this idyll of tall pines, waterfalls, lakes, and rhododendron bushes, it might be hard to believe how desolate this place once was. In the mid-19th century, Cragside was a lonely outcropping surrounded by heathland.

Over more than 25 years, Armstrong and architect Shaw developed a home thoroughly infused with the resident’s personality.

The man-made lakes on the estate have a practical purpose. They drove the world’s first hydroelectric power station, built here in 1870. It powered an arc light and a set of early light bulbs; installed in 1880, it is still in place today. Meanwhile, hydraulic power drove a range of amenities at the house, including a laundry, dishwasher, an elevator, a dumbwaiter, and even a rotisserie.

On the grounds, Cragside is an adventure, from the make-believe mountain landscape of the Rock Garden to the Pinetum, with skyscraping exotic pine species imported from North America. Five of the trees growing here are the tallest of their kind in the country.

One way to get a look at the estate is by car on the Carriage Drive, a six-mile route with places to stop and set off on walking trails.

Just south of Wrexham is an understated Neoclassical country house that took shape in the 17th and 18th centuries. Another property with a special location, Erddig rests on an escarpment over the meandering River Clywedog.

One of the reasons Erddig truly stands out is because it was neglected for much of the 20th century. No modern conveniences like phone lines, electricity, or running water were installed. This state of inertia helped preserve a wealth of original decorative arts spanning 200 years. On show are furniture, porcelain, wallpapers, tapestries, and numerous portraits.

Its paintings also help set Erddig apart. It was a unique tradition for the estate’s staff to sit for portraits. This, and the high state of preservation of the house’s “downstairs” quarters and facilities, offers an intimate glimpse of the generations of people who worked here. It is possible to tour a preserved bakehouse, kitchen, blacksmith’s forge, sawmill, and laundry, all contrasting with the opulence of the rooms upstairs.

On the grounds is a rambling landscape, and an 18th-century gabled walled garden with rare fruit trees and around 100 ivy cultivars, constituting a National Plant Collection.

A section of Wat’s Dyke, the 40-mile-long early Medieval defensive earthwork, passes through the estate. Another reminder that this was once a contested border comes from the steep ramparts of a Norman castle, adapted from a much earlier hillfort.

5. Ightham Mote

Traced by a moat on London’s southeastern outskirts is one of England’s oldest surviving Medieval manor houses. The core of Ightham Mote is unchanged since the early 14th century, but additions and changes were made to the rest of the estate over the next 400 years.

From the outside, Ightham Mote looks remarkably uniform, and this is because none of its various historical owners embarked on an ambitious remodeling. Instead, the house was expanded piecemeal, all while retaining its inward courtyard configuration and that picturesque moat.

Inside, the house is a curious hodgepodge, with fixtures and decoration from different eras. This includes the 18th-century Chinese woodblock-printed wallpaper, colored by hand, and a handsome Jacobean staircase, carved around the early 17th century.

In the late 20th century, the American Palmer family resided at Ightham Mote. They were culturally-minded, hosting literary and social events and befriending the likes of novelist Henry James. In 1880, the Palmers commissioned artist John Singer Sargent to paint their daughter Elsie at the house’s great hall. A preparatory oil for this portrait is on show at the house, capturing the process of an artist at his peak.

After acquiring the house in the 1980s the National Trust embarked on a painstaking conservation process, essentially deconstructing the house to fully understand its many building phases and methods.

Ightham Mote sits in a hollow among 500 acres of wooded grounds, speckled with wildflowers in the spring and early summer. The property also has a geologically interesting location, where rolling chalk hills meet a large wedge of sandstone known as the High Weald, giving rise to distant views.

From 1570, the aristocratic Herbert family transformed a Welsh border fortress into an opulent country house. They left a mosaic of architecture at Powis Castle, dating from the 13th century to the 19th century.

Inside and out there are many surviving details from the 17th century, like Baroque murals, the Grand Staircase, and a rare surviving State Bedroom. The undoubted highlight is the south-facing terraced garden. With sensational views to the opposing ridge, six of the original four terraces survive, all dating to the late 1600s.

At the highest point, the Top Terrace features the estate’s signature yew trees, more than 40 feet tall. Dating back more than 300 years, these trees have a story to tell. As “tumps” they were topiaries that grew out in the 19th century and have since been clipped in a formal style.

Below is the regal Aviary Terrace with Mediterranean plantings, an arcade, and a balustrade, adorned with statues of shepherds by the Flemish Baroque sculptor John Nost. This is followed by the Orangery Terrace with an 18th-century orangery building framed by double herbaceous borders. Then on the lowest tier is the Apple Bank.

In 1784 the heiress Henrietta Herbert married Edward Clive, Governor of Madras and son of the first British Governor of the Bengal Presidency, Robert Clive. In one stroke, this elevated the fortunes of the Herberts, whose wealth had dwindled by the late 18th century.

During their time in India Both Robert and Edward Clive amassed a large collection of South Asian objets d’art. This forms the basis for the Clive Museum in the house’s North Range. In the 21st century, as part of a general reassessment of the British Empire, the museum is the focus of intense debate. This is due to the dubious means by which much of the collection was acquired, as loot following the Battle of Plassey (1757), which established East India Company rule in Bengal.