Next year, the Landmark Trust, an admirable charity that rescues interesting buildings—gatehouses, castles, piggeries, chapels—and rents them out for holidays, celebrates its first half-century. Its new project, for which funding is urgently needed, is Llwyn Celyn, a 15th-century manor house in the Black Mountains that has been covered in scaffolding for a decade. It hopes to open the house for rent in 2016.
The trust will have two more buildings for rent next year: Belmont, the seaside villa in Lyme Regis, Dorset, where John Fowles wrote The French Lieutenant’s Woman and which was formerly owned by Eleanor Coade, who developed Coade stone, and Pugin’s St Edward’s Presbytery in Ramsgate, Kent. There will also be an open weekend, on May 16–17, when 25 properties will be open to the public, plus a project with sculptor Anthony Gormley, LAND, with installations at the Martello Tower in Suffolk, Clavell Tower in Dorset, Lundy Island, Lengthsman’s Cottage in Warwickshire and Saddell Bay on the Mull of Kintyre.
For more information on how to donate to the appeal and to find out about the 50 breaks being offered to charities, telephone 01628 825920 or visit www.landmarktrust.org.uk
