The National Trust has marked 125 years since it bought its first historic house to save for the nation – for just £10. The then newly-formed “National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty” bought 14th century Alfriston Clergy House in East Sussex in 1896 for £10 and spent a further £400 on repairs. This purchase and restoration paved the way for the fledgling Trust, which now cares for more than 500 historic houses, castles, parks, and gardens and more than one million works of art. The house originally captivated Octavia Hill, one of the founders of the Trust, who wrote that she was moved by “the pleading voice of the old building itself… to be left to tell its story to the days that are to come”.
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