THERE’S no guarantee but let’s hope we continue with a recovery that has damped pandemic doom and gloom while buds and blossoms of new things bloom. It can be hard, though, in disparate Scotland. As a European country, this is a cross between Belgium and Norway.

One cheering voice has come from Philip Long, a son of Edinburgh recently made chairman of the National Trust for Scotland, after first serving as the inaugural chairman of the revolutionary V&A design museum in Dundee, with its stunning architecture almost afloat on the River Tay. Old buildings owned by the trust are as a rule more crumbly. These two institutions, both charitable in status, offer us a demanding Scottish spectrum of objectives.

The trust, founded in 1931, has evolved into a worthy institution, dedicated to saving and preserving things that, if only we knew it, would leave us all the poorer once they vanished. Scotland at its worst can after all be a deadbeat kind of nation, weighed down by the burden of too many historical bum deals and defeats. It’s the kind of Scotland that prevailed a bit too much by the time of the turn of the 21st century, after 50 years of Labour rule.

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But Scotland is at its best when it strives to renew itself, and is sometimes a place better than any other on Earth for its exhilarating creativity. From the Reformation to the Enlightenment to the Industrial Revolution, phases like that have always recurred. I like to think it is a national rebirth we are again now living through. But I have to say I’m not sure.

Of course, Scotland is nothing if not unpredictable. The nation can thrive in activities at which it has never excelled before, and these may endure or not. Two odd examples of the present time are sculpture and tennis. It’s a mystery where Eduardo Paolozzi and Andy Murray came from. We must be glad they are here whether they find successors or not.

Today I’m going to focus on the means of recording our past that appeared in the museums and galleries founded in the 19th century, as Scots realised they needed to make an effort to preserve their unique history. Philip Long is an heir to this tradition and may become a key figure in its evolution, after moving from the design museum to the National Trust.

At the latter, he says: “It wasn’t the easiest start, and an immensely difficult time for a team driven by the great cause the trust represents. The first lockdown imposed in March [2020] had stopped many of the charity’s funding sources. This bleak, unprecedented and unpredictable situation demanded urgent actions that were equally as tough, reducing costs by curtailing spending and, regrettably and painfully, involving a programme of redundancy.”

It was an awkward fact that over the years the membership of the Trust had tended to turn venerable and respectable as well. The trustees have made efforts to attract a younger clientele, with holiday cottages on the estates, tearooms in the big houses and playgrounds outside for the weans. But something more drastic seems necessary for a long-term future.

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They have tried to import dynamic trouble-shooters. One was a new president, Neil Oliver, the controversial TV personality also noted as a fierce foe of Scottish nationalism. He prompted a wave of ordinary members to resign, presumably those who take a patriotic view of their country and could not square this with Oliver’s crude Unionist rhetoric.

It is odd that the trustees failed to see it coming. Two of them had parents who were themselves trustees or employees of the trust, so that, to quote their website blurbs, they were “brought up with the rhetoric and evolution of the Trust”. This would have been in an older Scotland, where nationalism was not yet decent. There has been no movement with our times.

Another big problem now is that the properties are of different kinds. There are buildings often still occupied by their original owners. An example is The Binns in West Lothian, once the ancestral home of Labour MP Tam Dalyell.

BUT to get in and see its treasures, prior contact was necessary to negotiate a time to visit – people could not just drop by on a whim. This shrewd rule probably kept numbers down, no doubt to the satisfaction of the laird.

Elsewhere, problems can be quite different. The trust embarked on its most ambitious conservation project ever when it had Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s masterpiece of Hill House at Helensburgh covered by the Hill House Box. The west of Scotland’s soggy weather had played havoc with this triumph of domestic modernism ever since it was finished in 1904.

The Trust’s website says: ”Mackintosh’s experimental design, combined with his trial of new materials, has meant that the house has been soaking up water like a sponge for more than 115 years. Battered by around 190 days of rain each year, the long-term survival of the building is in doubt and there’s a real danger of its priceless … interior being lost forever.” The cost of the project has had to be met by a special appeal.

There is a peculiar problem of its own, for the trust because it does not charge visitors anything to come and see its wild landscapes. Indeed, Scots would surely object to paying a fee to get into Glencoe or Torridon. In the US, it is routine to put a price on entry to national parks, particularly if they extend over more than one state, so can count as federal assets. But in democratic Scotland even this minor degree of commercialism (or financial responsibility) is thought to be beyond the moral and practical pale.

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Yet it is not as if such properties cost nothing to preserve in their natural state. Kintail is the most rugged of all, with golden eagles soaring over the Five Sisters. But even there it will be necessary to spend money on maintaining paths or providing other safety features. And then guides, based in a permanent outdoor centre, are employed to direct hikers round the most picturesque spots. All this involves expenditure, not very extravagant expenditure perhaps – these are not luxury holidays. Even so, the money has to come from somewhere.

The most basic problem of all is that the trust does not have enough income. As a charity, or what we would be better to call a voluntary enterprise, it fulfils a useful purpose of keeping interest up among its most committed supporters through their subscriptions. But that purpose fails if it leads only to financial stringency. There is a stark contrast with Scottish National Heritage, run by the Government, which has more money but little contact with the public.

Altogether the Scottish management of our heritage is a bit of a mess, with responsibility for it divided between public and private bodies, sometimes squabbling over incredibly slow and obstructive planning procedures.

One simple answer would be to place everything under a single authority, though that might deter rather than inspire visitors to come and see these treasures for themselves. Certainly we need more vigorous management of the whole scene. A country and culture awakening from a pandemic may in that sense encourage talents we have not exploited well in the past.