APRS counts the Trust among its biggest successes

You know that feeling when a younger sibling, or someone you mentored at work, goes on to bigger and better things? There’s a huge amount of pride in their achievements, but also perhaps a wee bit of envy!

Well, spare a thought for Action to Protect Rural Scotland (APRS), the tiny countryside charity which, 95 years ago, was intimately involved in the foundation of the National Trust for Scotland.

We’re about to celebrate our centenary, and so we’re looking back and celebrating our achievements over the years. There’s a lot to celebrate, but one of our most significant successes happened within the first five years of our history.

The story began when the owner of the Loch Dee estate in Galloway proposed gifting the 9,000 acres to the nation, with initial discussions about placing it in the care of the National Trust. However, Sir John Stirling Maxwell (one of the founding members of the National Trust for Scotland), vice president of APRS and later president, strongly believed that ownership should remain with a Scottish organisation, and he brought together a group of ’the great and the good’ to discuss what to do.

Our 1930 report says:

’The Committee has the question of the formation of such a Trust under consideration…. It is felt that, whereas the National Trust in England has its hands very full, and is by policy averse to commitments in Scotland, public benefactors in the North, who might be disposed to gift properties, either large or small, to the nation, have no body of public trustees to whom to resort.’

Many of those involved in initial discussions were office bearers or members of APRS, but there were also representatives of many organisations present. The discussions centred on whether APRS could, itself, become the National Trust, or whether it should establish a separate organisation. In the end, because the goals of the APRS focused on what we would now refer to as policy, advocacy and education rather than on ownership of land and buildings, it was thought better to allow the APRS to continue its work while a new organisation was established.

The National Trust for Scotland was founded in 1931, with Sir Iain Colquhoun, APRS chair, stepping into the role of the Trust’s first chair. APRS also offered the services of their honorary secretary, the planner and architect Sir Frank Mears, to help set up the fledgling organisation, and their offices as a base. The Trust returned the favour 60 years later, as APRS held their offices at Gladstone’s Land, the Trust’s 17th-century tenement on the Royal Mile, for 25 years.

The early growth and success of the Trust was due to a then substantial bequest of £5,000 (worth £400,000 today) made by Miss Mary Lumsden, a London-based APRS member. This gift paid for the administrative costs of acquiring and managing properties and recruiting members. By 1932, the Trust was in full swing, and our 1932 annual report proudly declared:

’So successful a début under the adverse financial conditions of the past year augurs well. Scotland abounds in places of natural beauty and historic interest, for the safeguarding of which new possibilities have now been opened up, and as the Trust becomes more widely known it may be anticipated with confidence that increasing support will be given to it, both in Scotland and by Scottish people overseas.’

The Trust’s success since those early days speaks for itself. It’s interesting that, since we established the Trust, APRS has excelled at creating new bodies and campaigning for the formation of new public bodies. As well as the Trust, we founded the Scottish Campaign for National Parks (SCNP), an organisation we still campaign for alongside National Parks. Our campaigns for a strategic approach to hydroelectric development, taking account of natural beauty and local development needs, led to the formation of the North of Scotland Hydro board in 1943 (which was dismantled with the privatisation of utilities in 1990). APRS campaigning on river pollution for more than a decade led to the establishment of the River Purification Boards, which were then enveloped into SEPA in 1995. Our campaigns on woodland protection led to the Forestry Act 1951, which regulated the felling of trees and stopped the wholesale felling of Scotland’s native woodlands. And our campaigning for a Town and Country Planning Act throughout the 1930s and 40s laid the basis for legislation which is still at the core of our work today. As APRS wrote in their annual report in 1932, ‘the choice before the Nation is either to plan for the future, or to proceed as before without method or control’. We feel the legacy of the Town and Country Planning Act speaks for itself.

The early history of APRS is tied to the formation of environmental institutions, structures, and key legislation that we still value today.