Conservation, recreation, or both? The National Trust for Scotland’s exploitation of UK country park policy, 1967 – 1992

Britain’s two National Trusts are charitable bodies, primarily known for conserving historic buildings, but also ensuring public access to those properties and their surroundings, and to important or historic landscape areas. With that remit in mind, it is curious to find the National Trust for Scotland (NTS) engaging closely in the creation of country parks, intended by the UK Government as dedicated (and somewhat expendable) recreational spaces. This paper uses five separate and distinct case studies to compare the approaches taken by the NTS in its Scottish country park projects. Very little academic work has been done on the NTS, and this paper fills an important gap in exploring the organisation’s approach with recreational land under its control. It shows the organisation addressing restrictive donor conditions contradicting a published ethos of open access, showing itself willing to bend, and even to subvert, the rules set by legislators, to use funding in innovative ways, and to promote ‘passive’ recreation – walking, picnicking, relaxing – as an approach less likely to compromise the scenic aspects of the landscape that visitors are seeking to enjoy. This analysis is important to present-day understandings of the balance between landscape conservation and public access, a dilemma that continues to trouble organisations concerned with conservation but dependent on public support and desirous of opening up access.