A Past Worth Preserving? ; Stately Homes or Football Stadiums - What Defines Scotland's Heritage and Can Our Treasures Be Saved Without Becoming Fusty Museum Pieces? Essay of the Week by Allan Burnett

Summary

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THE Last-Chance Saloon is not thought to be among the vast number of buildings in the National Trust for Scotland (NTS) heritage portfolio. However, given that the Trust has muddled through 80 years of existence without a comprehensive list of everything it owns, anything is possible. It would have provided a fitting venue for yesterday's annual general meeting at the SECC in Glasgow, which took place at a time when the organisation responsible for the conservation of our heritage must do or die.

With a new chairman, Sir Kenneth Calman, and a road-map to the future prepared by former Holyrood Presiding Officer George Reid, the Trust now has to rapidly put into practice the new ideas that will rescue it from a deep existential crisis, both in its ruinously overstretched finances and its gridlocked management structure.

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A Past Worth Preserving? ; Stately Homes or Football Stadiums - What Defines Scotland's Heritage and Can Our Treasures Be Saved Without Becoming Fusty Museum Pieces? Essay of the Week by Allan Burnett

The work has already begun, with a primary task being a full inventory of its properties, which includes castles, country houses and crofts. Only then can the Trust do the maths on its estate: what it's actually worth, how much it really does cost to run, what its potential for development is, which assets should be considered for disposal, and so on.

Reid's report concludes that the NTS is institutionally incapable of real positive change, and that a decimation and slimline rebuild of its management structure is necessary.

But to make the changes that truly matter to long-term survival, it must also rely on its wid...

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