Tank Destroyer Society

There was a positive outcome from the fiasco. An official inquiry was set up, leading to a re-establishment in 1980 of the National Land Fund. It was renamed the National Heritage Memorial Fund, chaired by Lord Charteris, and with an annual budget of Pounds 3 million.

And so we arrive at the present. On its own, the Pounds 3 million annual grant is feeble in a marketplace where Van Goghs can fetch Pounds 30 million. But, if pressured enough, the Government has often dug into its pocket. Nostell Priory, Yorkshire, Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire, and Weston Park, in Staffordshire, were all secured in this way, at a cost of Pounds 25 mil lion in total. Last spring, Mrs Thatcher offered a glimpse of enormous further funds when she pledged Pounds 200 million to pay for the Thyssen art collection. In the end, she was turned down.

Now there is a lull in the Memorial Fund’s activities, although staff talk darkly of a gathering storm, with six important paintings coming on to the market. Other heritage crises are still going on for instance, an important painting by Arthur Devis is to be sold by the British Rail Pension Fund next month. But many items are outside the Heritage Fund’s remit to save items of “national”, as opposed to “local”, significance.

How can the situation be

assessed? Any campaigning curator still has to undertake a forbidding obstacle race. First, he is probably short of funds. He can apply to any number of charities, such as the National Art-Collections Fund (Pounds 1 million per year); the Pilgrim Trust; even J.Paul Getty Jr., who has a reputation as a white knight. The curator may be able to arrange a private treaty sale with the vendor, whereby the Treasury agrees to waive tax and the vendor gets a 25per cent douceur. And of course he can approach the NHMF.

In a recent speech, Lord Charteris, chairman of the fund, said wistfully: “I dream that the memorial had never been plundered but that the money had been allowed to be invested and to grow … if this had happened, the resources of the NHMF would probably now be about Pounds 700 million.”

This Government has revolutionized the arts by encouraging private enterprise. Surely there is an argument, both practical and moral in the light of the fund’s history, for applying the same principals to the NHMF? If it were to be given substantial funding, as does, for instance, the Getty Museum in California, it could invest and manage it in money markets, giving itself a chance to plan for future crises. Perhaps, also, it could extend its strict criteria to embrace more of the heritage items that are being lost.

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What does Flirt II, a First World War tank, have in common with the Mary Rose, Picasso’s “Weeping Woman” and a battered roundabout horse? And what distinguishes those three from the Chatsworth drawings, Richard Dadd’s “Oberon and Titania” and Monkton, the Surrealist home of Edward James? The difference is one of salvation.

The first group has been saved for the nation during the current decade, and is featured in an exhibition on the National Heritage Memorial Fund at the British Museum from next Thursday. The second group has been exported and dispersed. Now the exhibition provides an opportunity to assess the fund and its future.

During the last century, concepts of heritage have altered enormously. For example, in 1873, when the first National Monuments Bill listed a group of protected buidings, the owners were affronted by what they saw as the imposition of overseers of their property. But the realization grew that our heritage must be preserved and, by the end of the Second World War, there was a deep urge to care for what had so nearly been lost. In an idealistic gesture the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hugh Dalton, proclaimed in 1946 that the Pounds 50 million raised from the sale of war surplus was now the National Land Fund. It was, he said, “a thank-offering for victory” with a general brief to preserve “some of the loveliest parts of the land”.

The heritage honeymoon did not last, however. The Government arranged a number of private treaty sales but otherwise scarcely used the money from the fund. By 1957, it had grown to Pounds 60 million and Enoch Powell, then financial secretary to the Treasury, clawed the original Pounds 50 million back and the remaining Pounds 10 million was left inaccessible in the coffers.

Then came a period of crisis, following the introduction of Wealth Tax and Capital Gains Tax in 1974. House after house went under the hammer as families sold their properties to meet the tax bills. In 1977, things came to a head with the great Rothschild house, Mentmore. As Marcus Binney, then chairman of the pressure group, Save Britain’s Heritage, says: “As the campaign to preserve Mentmore developed, our attention turned to the National Land Fund, and we found the money was there, standing at

Pounds 17.5 million.” But the desperately needed money was still not available, even though as little as Pounds 1 million would have saved many important treasures for the nation. “We taunted the Government daily before the sale with the absurdity of the situation.”

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