The National Trust is 100 years old this week. At its heart lies a multifaceted education programme -but it was not always so, writes Jonathan Croall. The National Trust’s growth has been extraordinary. From humble beginnings, with just 100 members, it has grown steadily over the decades to become the largest private landowner in the country. It has more than 2 million members and another 10 million people a year paying to view its houses and gardens. In 1993 nearly half a million children of school age visited its properties.

Yet for the first 75 years of its existence, the trust’s policy on education was a brutally simple one: it ignored it. Even as late as 1970 it was reluctant to work with young people. Today, education is seen as a fundamental part of its purpose, and there are now substantial plans to move into adult education in the next few years.

Yet the seeds were there from the start. Robert Hunter, one of the three founders, spoke in the early days of managing buildings as “places of resort for recreation and instruction”. And at the inaugural meeting, when co-founder Octavia Hill referred to the desire to “save many a lovely view or old ruin or manor house from destruction”, the Earl of Carlisle suggested “the society might also act as an educator”.

Indeed the reforming ideals of the founders were quite consistent with an educational function, even if the word “instruction” now evokes images of mechanical learning and the worthy lecture so beloved of the Victorians. Octavia Hill certainly believed that a respect for and appreciation of the countryside could be achieved through education.

Yet experiments were almost non-existent. In 1900 the trust bought the 14th-century Long Crendon Courthouse in Buckinghamshire, part of which it planned to use as “a holiday home for London boys” to attend art classes. For reasons that were more to do with personalities than policies, the idea never got off the ground.

There seems to be no record of any further attempts to exploit the trust’s properties or land until 1947, when most of Attingham Park, an 18th-century mansion in Shropshire, became an adult education college. Out of this came, in 1953, the first “National Trust Summer School on Great Houses”, though this was patronised mainly by American scholars.

Why was the trust so loath to venture into education? Part of the explanation lies in the upper middle-class, male-dominated nature of the staff in these and subsequent years. This produced attitudes exemplified in the startling comment, made in 1969 by the historic buildings secretary Robin Fedden, that “the trust has nothing to do with people”.

There was also the question of legality. For many years, those in charge claimed, and possibly even believed, that education was not only unimportant, but outside the terms of its obligations as laid out in the Acts of Parliament that established the trust.

Yet in the 1980s, when the importance of education was finally realised, fresh legal advice was soon to hand suggesting the Act need not be interpreted so narrowly.

Another reason for reluctance was the horror some senior trust staff felt at the idea that children should be let loose among the priceless paintings, furniture and objects in their properties. But this argument was killed dead by a survey in the late 1970s which showed that, among the 75,000 children visiting trust properties that year, the worst damage had been caused by a boy running his toy car across a marble table.

Yet there remained a pervasive feeling within the trust that it was not in the business to spend money on teaching, that this should be “left to the professionals”. It was in this still unfavourable climate that John Hodgson first approached the trust with the idea of its tackling education.

As deputy director of the innovative Geffrye Museum in London, he had been involved in arts education and taking city children into the countryside, and had been staggered by the effect these activities had on them. When in 1968 he suggested the trust might introduce a similar idea, he got “a civilised brush-off”. Two years later, however, he was offered the chance to create a Museum of Childhood at Sudbury Hall in Derbyshire, funded by the county council.

“I saw my opportunity, ” he recalls. “I brought in school parties and then started to insinuate education into the house itself, without at first telling the trust - you had to do things that way to show them it would work.” Sudbury Hall became the first historic house in the world to have a live education programme.

This independent approach also led directly to the founding of the Young National Trust Theatre in 1978, after Dot McCree, a theatre director, knocked on his door at Sudbury one day, and said she wanted to do some theatre-in-education. “We plotted, did things in the holidays,” John Hodgson says. He organised a production at Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire: key trust staff came, saw, and were conquered, though even then allegedly more by the public relations possibilities than by the educational potential.

Even now there was some resistance. “The conservationists would cry, ‘Children! Sticky fingers!’” John Hodgson remembers. In 1979 he was made the trust’s first full-time education officer - a landmark appointment, though his isolated office in Wiltshire and his Pounds 10,000 budget to cover all of England, Wales and Northern Ireland was hardly a ringing vote of confidence.

Even now some staff in the regions were still unpersuaded. But enthusiasm gradually spread as school visits began to be arranged and modest resources produced for teachers. “I always insisted on restricting numbers, providing a real education programme, and organised enjoyment,” John Hodgson says. “That was what made children want to come back again.”

The 1980s saw a sea-change in attitudes at the trust. Today, under education manager Patricia Lankester, it runs an effective, well-resourced and popular education service.

There are study bases at 47 properties, a team of 22 education officers and wardens and nearly 5,000 schools in corporate membership. Later this month the trust will launch its Project Minerva, an appeal for funds to enable it to extend its work with schools into a programme of lifelong learning.

The trust was, of course, founded to preserve “lands of natural beauty” as well as “houses of historic interest”. Critics often complain of a bias in favour of buildings but the trust’s educational work, in tune with the times, is increasingly concerned with the natural environment.

Olivia Hill would doubtless be pleased that what, 100 years ago, she hoped would become “open-air sitting-rooms for the poor”, are increasingly being used as open-air classrooms for everyone.

For details of the trust’s centenary celebrations, which include special events for schools, a theatre-in-education tour, competitions and new publications, contact the Education Department, National Trust, 36 Queen Anne’s Gate, London SW1H 9AS. Tel: 071-222 9251.

Facts and Figures.

In England, Wales and Northern Ireland the trust protects: 580 acres of countryside 545 miles of unspoilt coastline 230 historic houses 130 important gardens.

Its holdings include: 20,000 buildings 1,217 tenanted farms 60 villages 38 inns and pubs 25 industrial monuments 25 windmills and watermills 8,000 oil paintings 100,000 drawings, watercolours, prints and engravings.