Welcomes and goodbyes

Fiona Reynolds once considered Yorkshire her second home, she says. When she was in her 20s she spent months living in the village of Addingham, near Ilkley, while fighting at a public inquiry to stop a huge hole being gouged out of the limestone hillside behind Kilnsey Crag in Wharfedale.

Objecting to the quarry at Cool Scar in the early 1980s was something of a rite of passage for her in her then-job of Secretary to the Council for National Parks, and 30 years later she name-checks with fondness some of her comrades-in-arms at the bitterly fought Kilnsey public inquiry, people like Yorkshire Dales Society founders Colin Speakman and the late Ken Wilson.

“In the end, we won a partial victory,” she says, and even after all these years a tinge of disappointment is evident in her voice. “We objected to this beautiful part of Wharfedale being dug up for materials to build roads, and it was eventually decided that if the limestone had to be extracted then, because it was of such high-quality, it should be used only for chemical processes.”

As it turns out, her background as a champion of National Parks and rights of access was a clue to how she would change the National Trust when, two decades later, she was made the organisation’s director general.

The perceived notion that the National Trust was somehow exclusive, the preserve of the middle classes, was replaced – largely through a personal crusade by Dame Fiona – to bring more ordinary people into the Trust’s 300 historic houses and gardens, three quarters of a million acres of land and 700 miles of coastline.

In this respect she has been a spectacular success, and during a visit to one the National Trust’s premier Yorkshire properties, Nostell Priory near Wakefield, she recites the figures which show how the Trust’s reach has grown since she took the job in 2001. Visitor numbers have risen from 10m a year to 19 million, while membership has increased from 2.7 million to four million.

Nowhere illustrates this better than Nostell, she says, where visitor numbers have grown from 50,000 to last year’s figure of 123,000. This dramatic increase in the trust’s reach is due to what she describes as a new “open arms” approach by them.

“I hope people see a much warmer organisation now, more friendly and welcoming, and although we do still have to have some ‘Do Not Touch’ signs around the houses most of the ropes have gone.

“That sense of stiffness and formality has definitely relaxed. We still do look after things that are precious, of course, but we’re not quite so ‘Keep out!’ and ‘Keep off the grass!’ as we used to be.”

This populist approach has made her perhaps the most controversial figure ever to run the National Trust. She has challenged many old practices and antagonised some conservative – and Conservative – sensibilities.

The strategy of “Bringing Houses to Life” she introduced to make properties more engaging for the public and involved having guides dressed in period costume and interactive displays. It caused some members to level the charge that the historic houses had been dumbed down, and the whole policy amounted to “Disneyfication.”

Her answer to this charge is now well-rehearsed: “Firstly, Disney is brilliant at warm welcomes and making people feel happy that they’re there – so why would we not want to be like them? Secondly, Disney had to make everything up but we have the real thing at the National Trust. We have all these wonderful places with extraordinary stories. We don’t copy Disney in any way, while they come to us and ask us how they can mimic our glorious properties.

“Nostell Priory is actually a perfect example of this. There are so many layers of history here, so many collections gathered by different people over the years, each with their own story. Disney would long to have something as wonderful as we have here. So, I think you can say that that charge doesn’t bother me at all.”

Opening some estates to allotments has been another initiative to reach out to ordinary people but one that has concerned some of the Trust’s old guard. With an estimated 100,000 people on waiting lists of allotments in the UK, the decision to allow the grounds of some stately homes to be used for 1,000 plots, although so far none has been in Yorkshire.

Last year she found herself in a middle of another controversy by mounting a personal campaign against the Government’s new planning policy framework which would have relaxed controls on building in the countryside. Her stance was understandable – some might say even predictable – given her pro-landscape conservation background.

She wrote to all four million members asking them to sign a petition against the plans. More than 200,000 obliged, but the move was described by one Minister as a “carefully choreographed smear campaign by left-wingers based within the national headquarters of pressure groups”.

She says: “That was complete nonsense. Some of the words they used to describe the Trust, frankly, did not become them. They’ve since recognised that and listened to our concerns. As a result I think we’ve got a much better planning framework out of it and everyone, including the Government, is pleased that that episode is over.”

Last year, however, the Trust ruffled yet more feathers by banning shooting on some estates. This provoked a particularly angry response from a syndicate in Surrey when its lease on a long-standing game shoot was terminated. Dame Fiona answers the criticism by explaining that this particular land surrounding a beautiful Edwardian mansion called Polesden Lacey, just off the M25, had become one of the trust’s most visited properties.

“The potential for the game shoot and the visitors to compete with each other in a very crowded space was, frankly, too much of a risk. We don’t have that problem everywhere. There’s lots of places where shoots happily coexist with visitors, where the continue to renew shooting licenses.”

When she first took the job she was quoted as saying that one priority would be to make the Trust greener, and in her 12 years in charge she has overseen a huge project of insulation and, where possible, conversion of properties to renewable energy sources like wood from their own estates. Small wind turbines have been introduced at other properties, raising eyebrows, but she says: “Anything we do has to fit our aesthetic and wider conservation ambitions, so you won’t see the National Trust putting up a big wind farm, I can assure you of that. But where it works we will look at small scale turbines.”

Now aged 54, she is leaving the trust in November, and after a break to write a book about her time here, she will become the first woman master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

“It’ll tell you why I’m leaving,” she says. “There is no job in the world that could match the National Trust. It’s the best job, and I’ve loved every minute here, but I know that, particularly in a chief executive role, it’s not right for the organisation and not right for you as an individual to stay too long.”

Did she have a favourite National Trust property in Yorkshire? She thinks for a moment. “I have to say Nostell Priory,” she smiles. “But actually, it’s impossible to have a favourite property. If I’m honest my favorite is always the one I’m visiting at that particular moment. Last week I was at Brimham Rocks and Fountains Abbey, and I thought how wonderful it was to be there. Then there’s Malham Cove and those lovely farms in Upper Wharfedale.

“We look after so much beauty, and the pleasure I’ve had from this job is to understand that people love beautiful places and be the facilitator of that relationship.”