Start your summer holiday by sleeping in a pineapple.
Spend the night in some of the UK’s historic destinations for unremarkable prices.
In 1965, British MP Sir John Smith and his wife Lady Christine had an outrageous idea. They saw that the country’s institutions were not interested or able to protect or rehabilitate many of the nation’s smaller, quirky, historic buildings and properties.
Their solution was fantastically simple and yet radical for its time: open as many of them as possible and let the public enjoy holidaying in them.
These are the origins of the Landmark Trust – a pioneering building conservation charity that rescues endangered historical buildings and sensitively restores them into self-catering holiday accommodation at reasonable, affordable prices.
Memorable buildings
Four million members now support the charity that has over two hundred classic properties in their portfolio including an Egyptian building in Cornwall, an 18th-Century Scottish pineapple, a Lincolnshire prison, a disused train station and a seaside fortress in the Channel Islands, most for around £50 per occupant, year-round.
Holidaying in a landmark building, often far away from other tourist hotspots, is one of the features that makes the Landmark Trust’s work so popular with visitors who stay in their unusual mix of houses, castles, keeps, cottages, and other eclectic buildings.
The properties and lands saved from dereliction, or the wrecking-ball, do not become museums to their previous glories but earn their keep from the visitors who stay in them.
In a society previously built on structures of ancient entitlement, money and class, the transformation of these properties for the enjoyment of all is what made the Smiths’ initiative for the Landmark Trust so far-reaching at its inception.
Open to all
Nowadays, in an age where ecological concerns touch the decisions we make about where and how to vacation ethically, nothing could be sounder than saving old buildings to make them useful again for tourists.
Moreover, the Landmark Trust is part of a wider movement in social justice tourism that recognises the importance of leisure to the wellbeing of people.
When economic downturn hits vulnerable groups hardest, organisations like this charity become increasingly important in offering quality holiday opportunities at affordable rates.
The Landmark Trust brings together Britain’s fascination for its building heritage with a selection of properties that anyone can create new history within.
