A Derbyshire beauty spot has been criticised by visitors for being too expensive.
Hardwick Hall has received a number of recent negative reviews on TripAdvisor, claiming that the venue has become overpriced.
The Hall, near Chesterfield, is currently closed for essential maintenance work, but when it is open, it costs £16 per adult, £8 per child, or £40 for a family.
Towards the end of last year, I was due to arrange a short walk and a cafe visit for a walking group of former work colleagues. We'd settled on Hardwick Hall because it is near the M1 and handy for those who have to travel some distance.
The National Trust website seemed to suggest that as the cafe is on the other side of the entrance, all non-members in our group would have to pay the £16 entrance fee just to enter the cafe. A brief phone call to the NT confirmed that this was the case. Okay, they don't want the business so we went elsewhere.
It will be interesting to see how this goes, because Hardwick Hall isn't particularly fascinating and £16 is steep for non-members who merely want to stroll round the grounds and pop into the cafe for a coffee and a bun. To my mind it's another example of the NT losing its way.
13 comments:
They'e too busy being woke . . . Promoting the properties and considering the customer come a poor second (and third, if you want to be pedantic).
A million years ago we both took out life membership of the National Trust for Scotland when it was a bargain price. So we get to enter NT properties free. At one point we had thought about leaving the NT something in our wills but they are now much too woke for our taste. Same is true for the large number off educational institutions that keep begging us for money. Fat chance!
Is this the NT losing its way or pursuing a different way? Pricing people away from a service is a wonderful way of running it into the ground. Suddenly the government finds lots of lovely property on its hands. Ooh, what to do? Sell it of course. Some of it will be in the areas earmarked for rewilding. Most of it will be prime property for retired pollies and pharmers with wodges of wonga.
Out of interest I checked the life membership fees. Single is £1,730. Senior over sixty is £1,295. Family is £2,265. Those figures are quite steep, interests change, seen it once, children grown up, electric car won't get there, don't want the slavery lecture before we get out of the car park. Nah, to me it's evident that it's intentionally being run down. Another lot of family silver heading to the pawn shop.
I guess that tax-payers are already funding a good deal of what the NT own and do, they get so much special treatment, that they really are yet another expensive quango, full of over-paid fat cats, walking on water.
You possibly recall my beef with Forestry England for the same reasons!
Suggested solution for the NT. Punters pay £16 but can get a substantial refund on the way out if they can explain the colonial origins of their coffee and bun, and why Bess of Hardwick was a role model for strong independent career women of today.
Make the unwoke subsidise those with the correct corporate attitudes. It's the easiest way to sustain the new elite.
I've suggested before that organisations which have lasted for more than around 70 years tend to be colonised by the interests of the people in charge and workers, rather than holding true to the original reason for being set up.
The National Trust was founded in 1895... and now appears to have been overtaken by the Woke, signalling their virtue.
The National Health Service was founded in 1948, and could do with a good sorting out.
The BBC was started in 1922(ish), and has careered out of hand. It should be privatised.
These organisations still do lots of good work but they are all hobbled by producer capture - and the unwillingness of politicians to appear to be the bad people. It will end in tears.
I found the recent TV show by Nick Knowles looking at restoring and maintaining large country houses and castles very interesting. I also noted that some were still privately owned, and not under the auspices of the NT. I'll bear that in mind if I start to do a bit of travelling when the weather gets better. Even at a local level I've noticed a number of small car parks which used to charge £1-£1.50 per hour are now run by NT and the minimum seems to be £5 for 4 hours, even if you aren't stopping that long. Suffice to say I don't use them any more...
Jannie - too busy being woke is what annoyed us enough to cancel our membership. Also too infantile, not enough feel for the history of their properties.
dearieme - years ago I considered life membership but decided we'd lose interest after a while so years later we just paid yearly. Now we don't.
Andy - Hardwick certainly has a lot of land close to the M1. Who knows?
Scrobs - yes I do recall your beef with Forestry England. You are right, they are effectively a type of quango.
Sam - good idea, unwoke punters will flock there.
DJ - state education too, even from the side-lines it feels tired and ineffective. A serious look at voucher schemes would be interesting.
microdave - I'm sure high car park charges are a mistake, although maybe the NT thinks high charges will encourage people to become members.
"Suddenly the government finds lots of lovely property on its hands." Eh? The government doesn't own the NT, it's a charity.
Point taken. Would that be enough to stop them though?
Even English Heritage is now a charity, after it actually made a profit.
'After the Second World War the Ministry of Works (as it had become) started to be interested in buildings other than castles, abbeys and manor houses. Its first industrial sites were acquired and in 1949 it acquired its first country house, Audley End in Essex. The Ministry had its sights set on a number of other big houses, but the Treasury was very nervous. The government felt it was one thing to take on old castles and abbeys, but quite another to look after, and maintain, huge roofed buildings full of works of art. After some debate it was decided that it would be financially more sustainable if the National Trust took on the country houses and that the Ministry of Works confined itself to the older monuments.'
No longer.
To me this is another example of the complete disconnect between the incomes of London 'professionals', quangos and politicians and the ordinary public. We more often talk about 'woke' attitudes but this is the financial aspect. £40 to a family on a hefty 3 figure income is a cheap day out, for working rural families to walk round a park it's ridiculously expensive. Maybe also a desire to punish ex-members who left because of the NT wokeism but thought they could still enjoy an occasional visit?
Wiggia - it's how monsters are born.
Woodsy - it seems expensive to me too, especially for families and they appear to be the visitors they are after.
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