The National Trust is focusing on the history of social change as a theme for a public arts programme (Report, 18 January). I will be interested to see how it portrays the protests taking place at its own sites as the animal welfare movement campaigns for a change in its policy of allowing hunts on National Trust land.
The majority of society believes that chasing and killing wild animals is barbaric and not acceptable in the 21st century but the National Trust issues licences for this cruel sport under the guise of trail hunting. The events are not monitored by the Trust to ensure hounds do not pick up a real scent instead of an artificial one so foxes, hares and deer are all at risk.
I am sure there are plenty of artists who would be willing to help the National Trust “ensure relevancy to the lives of modern people”.
Marion Birch
Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire
• While I’m all for the National Trust focusing on more radical parts of British heritage and commemorating the Kinder Trespass, it would be good to hear greater mention of Tom Stephenson and other stalwarts of the Ramblers’ Association, whose lobbying often seems to get overlooked and was an important part of the wider access movement.
Michael Cunningham
Wolverhampton
• I hope the National Trust’s publicising of social change linked to its sites will include mention of Lord Berwick’s concern about air pollution from his Attingham Park experimental furnace, which persuaded him to relocate it into someone else’s backyard in Coalbrookdale, where adverse health effects of the Industrial Revolution’s toxic air pollution passed unrecorded, if not unnoticed. Was he the first Nimby?
Michael Ryan
Bicton Heath, Shropshire
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