'For Everyone, for Ever'? The National Trust and the Construction of Englishness, c.1945-2000

2020 was a year of mass reckoning with the national past and its reflections in the built environment. The backlash against the National Trust's 'Interim Report' on its properties' colonial ties ranged between denial of the imperial legacy, and expressions of English and/or British national pride in the empire (Fowler 2020). These circumstances present an urgent need to revisit the National Trust as a key site for the formation and contestation of national identities. Using a combination of written and oral sources, this project will explore the Trust's own imagining of the nation, and popular perceptions of its connection to 'Englishness'.