british national trust tours

GoNOMAD Travel

Inspiration and links to plan your trip.

Countryside Group Tours From the UK’s National Trust

Group Tours Exploring the English Countryside

By Anna Levine

Tours are a great approach to meet new people and experience one-of-a-kind opportunities in an organized way.

From the rolling hills to the timeless woodlands and twisting country roads, few things can compare to England ‘s countryside.

Two tours that are available are the UK Countryside Tour’s “Telling the Stories of England” and a collection of tours from The National Trust.

Both tour groups offer a unique and up-close experience of these countryside hot spots.

UK Countryside Tours

The UK Countryside Tours offer escorted group travel, designed and guided by recognized experts. The program covers ten UNESCO World Heritage Sites and seven National Parks, as well as 100 of England’s cultural heritage gems, always focusing on the stories behind the monuments, castles, cathedrals, and battlefields.

This February the Tour company launched a new program offering brand new and innovative group tours. These escorted excursions provide adventure seekers with behind-the-scene experiences crafted to inspire Americans to explore Britain’s distinct regions.

The heritage and cultural tours of England are broken down into several categories including Art and Culture, History and Heritage, and Houses and Gardens . There’s really something for everyone no matter what your interests may be.

Mayflower 400

Available through UK Countryside Tours, commemorate the 400-year anniversary of the Mayflower’s voyage to the New World. Travelers begin by visiting the villages and churches where Pilgrims William Bradford and William Brewster lived and worshiped. From there explore the coastal towns and seaports from Northern England to the South Coast.

On the way, you can see a full-size replica of the Mayflower, visit the oldest pub on the Thames and stand on the steps of Plymouth Harbor.

All of this is available within the History and Heritage category of the tours.

Other tours under this section include Radical Thinkers , a tour about how the cotton industry began in Manchester and Statements in Stone which takes a look at the evolution of the English Countryside House.

Group tours are available seven days/ six nights with prices ranging from $3,000 to $10,000, with options for independent travelers and customized itineraries.

The tours meet in large, regional cities, allowing for easy transportation. On these tours travelers not only learn from their experienced guide but their peers as well, adding additional insight to these journeys.

Visiting the National Trust

Short for The National Trust for Places of History Interest or Natural Beauty , The National Trust

describes itself as “a charity that works to preserve and protect historic places and spaces—forever, for everyone.”

The Trust owns over 350 heritage properties, which include many historic houses, gardens, industrial monuments, and social history sites.

The recently restored house at Mount Stewart in County Down is now available for group tours. Visitors are greeted inside with internationally significant art, furniture and silverware.

Throughout the year new spaces, such as formal rooms and bedrooms, will be opening to share stories of the past from the Stewart Family. This is one of the most beautiful places in Northern Ireland and a must-see.

As the seasons change, hundreds of gardens across the country begin to blossom. Located in the South East of England, Polesden Lacey , one of the National Trust’s properties has formal gardens as well as an Edwardian rose garden. The pastel-colored roses are a favorite to see in June when at their peak.

Garden of Stumps

Yes, you read that correctly; this garden offers more than just flowers. In Sizergh Cumbria an overgrown area of the garden has been resurrected by using more than 20 tree stumps.

The stumpery showcases a selection of Sizergh’s four national Collections of Fern.

This industrial-looking garden is a unique spin on traditional gardens. There are also a variety of new plants available for all-year interest.

Levant Mine

It wasn’t until 20o6 that The National Trust took ownership of the Levant Mine, built in 1820 and closed in 1930.

This once thriving tin and copper mine is located on the Tin Coast in Cornwall.

The Cornish Mining World Heritage Site contains restored mining sites with exhibitions and a museum.

The site’s main attraction is its Cornish beam engine built in 1840 and still operated by steam on its original site.

The mine got the nickname “mine under the sea,” because tunnels were driven up to 2.5 km from the cliffs under the sea. These dark and winding tunnels are open for tours.

Tailored Tours

The National Trust offers a selection of packages and can tailor tours to meet groups needs and interests. Since completely independent from the Government, every visit supports the National Trust’s conservation work. It’s important to preserve these treasures in order for people to continue to visit.

Whether it be seeing The Mayflower (replica) up close in Plymouth, wandering around the stump garden in Cumbria or crouching through mining tunnels in Cromwell, both UK Countryside and the National Trust will help you get started on your group tour of England. Time to explore the countryside with friends and family.

Contact Information

The National Trust 

Eurail Passes: What to Know about Buying a Europe Train Pass

• Latest Posts

• Tunisia: Being of Service in Zammour - April 27, 2024
• Greece Getaway: Camping Hacks for Your Next Getaway - April 25, 2024
• Products and Clothing You Might Enjoy - April 25, 2024

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Insert/edit link

Enter the destination URL

Or link to existing content

What a prickle…

We're sorry – it looks like something's gone wrong

• All Day Excursions
• 2 For Tuesdays Excursions

National Trust Excursions

• Mystery Lunch Excursions
• City Explorer Tours
• Seaside Excursions
• Family Days Out
• Memorable Ocassions
• Historic Houses & Castles
• Christmas Markets & Events
• Showtime! Lunch & Tribute Shows
• Towns & Cities
• Special Events & Experiences
• Markets & Shopping Days Out
• Theme Parks & Zoos
• Dining Experiences
• Canal & River Cruises
• Museums & Cultural Days Out
• Charming Cotswolds Explorer Tours
• Festive Excursions
• Royal Residences
• Gardens, Parks & Flower Shows
• Back in Time
• New and Exclusive
• Explore Wales
• Our Vehicles
• Schools And Colleges
• Our Reviews

Available dates for our monthly 'National Trust Coach Club Excursions' ... Members and Non-Member welcome! (Typically operated midweek in the first week of the month )

Keyword Search

Availability search, site navigation.

Tours by Interest

• River Cruise
• Royal Connections
• Film Locations

Departure Date

Featured Venues

• Chatsworth House
• Blenheim Palace
• Sandringham
• Althorp Estate
• Westminster Abbey
• Windsor Castle
• Tower of London

Tours by Association

• The Royal Oak Foundation
• British Heritage Travel Magazine
• North England
• Northern Ireland
• South England
• Most Popular
• View Online Brochure

Discover Britain's Unique Heritage

Our featured tours.

• A Grand Tour of the Emerald Isle's Enchanting Gems

15th to 28th September 2024 - 14 Day Tour

For Kings & Country - An Exclusive Royal Celebration

Past, Present and Future

4th to 14th August 2024 - 11 Day Tour

Christmastime in the Charming Cotswolds & Chilterns

1st to 7th December 2024 - 7 Day Tour

Newsletter Signup

Browse Our Tours

• History of England Podcast Tour 2024
• Christmastime in the Charming Cotswolds & Chilterns
• For Kings & Country - An Exclusive Royal Celebration
• The Royal Chelsea Flower Show
• A Royal Summer in Scotland
• A Journey Through the Wonderful Heritage of Wales
• Aristocrats & Manor Houses & a Grand Tour to the North - 2024

Important Info

• Tour Agents
• Testimonials
• Privacy Policy
• Cookie Policy
• Terms and Conditions
• National Trust for Historic Preservation

Stay Social

Contact Info

Ten of the best British National Trust winter visits

Historic British properties run by the National Trust and with openings through the winter season.

Most National Trust properties are “put to bed” for the winter and closed to the public during the dark months. The NT is working, however, to make many historic homes more accessible in the off-season. Here are 10 impressive National Trust sites that have open days through this winter. Information on what’s available to see and opening dates for each of these great visits can be found  here .

• Our favorite facts about the National Trust
• Surprising Royal nicknames

1. GREENWAY, DEVON

NATIONAL TRUST IMAGES/ CHRIS LACEY

Agatha Christie called Greenway “the loveliest place in the world. On the “English Riviera” of Torbay (where she was born), the summer and holiday home of the world’s most famous mystery novelist is filled with books, mementos and equipage of family life and her extensive travels.

2. MONTACUTE HOUSE, SOMERSET

NATIONAL TRUST IMAGES/RUPERT TRUMAN

The colorful stonework, towering walls of glass, and the evergreen topiary in the gardens surrounding the Tudor house at Montacute an atmospheric visit in any season. Its mammoth Long Gallery houses a significant collection of Tudor and Elizabethan portraits on loan from the National Portrait Gallery.

3. WADDESDON MANOR, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE

7 national trust images.

The NT describes it perfectly, “Waddesdon Manor looks like a palace that’s leaped straight from the pages of a fairy-tale and landed in the hills of Buckinghamshire.” The Rothschild family home displays an opulence in furnishings, architecture, and art that are rare even among Britain’s most famous stately homes.

4. POLESDEN LACEY, SURREY

7 national trust images/ john miller.

Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother honeymooned at Polesden Lacey, an elegant Edwardian mansion overlooking the Surrey countryside. Marvel at the glittering Gold Room. The extensive art collection includes Dutch old masters and sparkling Fabergé ceramics.

5. ERDDIG, NORTH WALES

Widely acclaimed as one of Britain’s finest historic houses, Erddig is a fascinating 18-century country house reflecting the upstairs-downstairs life of a gentry family over 250 years. Head downstairs to see Erddig’s unique collection of servants’ portraits. Upstairs rooms are a trove of fine furniture, textiles, and wallpapers.

6. BODIAM CASTLE, EAST SUSSEX

This 14th-century moated castle offered state-of-the-art medieval splendor, but its time was passed — and it was the last such medieval fortress-home completed before gunpowder made the castle obsolete. Explore the picturesque of spiral staircases, towers, and battlements.

7. BADDESLEY CLINTON, WARWICKSHIRE

A moated manor house sitting in isolated splendor, Baddesley Clinton was the home of the Ferrers family for 500 years. Gaze out at frosty gardens through beautiful stained glass windows and discover the priest hole, a relic from Baddesley Clinton’s Tudor past.

8. BASILDON PARK, BERKSHIRE

Nestled in the Thames Valley, the Georgian mansion doesn’t feel its age at all. Through the 1950s Lord and Lady Iliffe filled the “lived-in” home with fine paintings, fabrics, and furniture that remain today. Down in the 1950s kitchen, retro packages, crockery, and occasional baking demonstrations seem out of time indeed.

9. QUARRY BANK MILL, CHESHIRE

NATIONAL TRUST IMAGES/PAUL HARRIS

Quarry Bank embodies the life of the Industrial Revolution. Visit the humming cotton mill, built-in 1784, and powered by Europe’s most powerful working waterwheel. Visit, too, the Apprentice House, where child workers lived and were schooled. A great visit, anytime.

10. BATEMAN’S, EAST SUSSEX

This 17th-century house on the Sussex Weald, with its mullioned windows and oak beams, was home to writer Rudyard Kipling. It’s cozy, personalized interiors display Kipling’s exotic curiosities collected around the world. In winter, the yew hedges accent frosty lawns and the small river at the end of the garden.

* Originally published in July 2015.

BHT newsletter

You may also like.

• Most Recent

Is this the last-known footage o...

On this day in 1819, Queen Victoria was born. This footage of Queen...

The spiritual claims and legends...

Have more spiritual claims and legends attached to Glastonbury than...

Wallis Simpson and the royal tit...

This moment in royal history happened all because Edward VIII abdic...

Why Queen Elizabeth II is in the...

Queen Elizabeth II is a Guinness Book of Records seven times over b...

WATCH: Incredible footage of the...

Have a look at this amazing footage of Queen Elizabeth addressing W...

Princess Diana was criticized fo...

Princess Diana was criticized for her "ignorance" of Northern Irela...

What the Royal Family’s favourit...

How much do you know about what the Royal Family drinks?

The Royal Family members who hav...

From Princess Anne to Captain Mark Phillips, did you know that seve...

A history of London Zoo, the wor...

The Zoological Society of London opened a zoological garden in Rege...

Prince William's favorite...How ...

Here's how to make one of Prince William's favorite dishes.

• T: 01823 331 356

Onboard Courier Service

Free Wifi & Charging Points

No Amendment Fees

Coach Trips To National Trust Locations

Book a national trust day trip with berrys coaches, download our app.

Britain Tours 2023

Travel with royal oak and experience the best of britain.

Our exclusive group tours allow guests the unique opportunity to discover the vast cultural and natural heritage of Great Britain firsthand, including many of the impressive places owned by the National Trust for England, Wales and Northern Ireland and the National Trust for Scotland. You can expect a host of varied architectural treasures with fascinating stories, family narratives and unique collections enclosed within, as well as beautiful landscapes, fragrant gardens and more.

Immerse yourself in the intriguing history and hidden gems of these nations with behind-the-scenes tours, after-dinner lectures and insights from the owners of the properties themselves, letting you delve deeper into captivating, living examples of Britain’s past.

South of England: Stately Homes & the Isle of Wight

May 1st to 10th, 2023 – 10 Day Tour

Renowned for its idyllic countryside and stunning coastline, the picturesque South of England is peppered with spectacular estates and unique homes.

A Tour Around the Treasure Houses of England

June 4th to 15th, 2023 – 12 Day Tour

The Treasure Houses of England are a collection of the most magnificent palaces, houses and castles, each with its own unique charm, stunning architecture and beautiful gardens.

Queens of the Castle: The Roses and Thorns of the Tudors

June 18th to 27th, 2023 – 10 Day Tour

Everyone knows the fate of Henry VIII’s six wives, but on this fascinating tour we delve into their stories and celebrate the 16th-century queens after taking inspiration from the smash-hit phenomenon, SIX The Musical.

Pilgrims, Founding Fathers & Hero GIs on the 4th July

June 28th to July 7th, 2023 – 10 Day Tour

On this captivating tour we honor the heroic GIs who fought in World War II, follow in the footsteps of America’s Founding Fathers and go in search of the hidden English gems that are connected to the birthplace of ‘the Land of Opportunity.’

Historic Kent: Castles, Gardens & Coastline

July 1st to 9th, 2023 – 9 Day Tour

The romantic county of Kent offers a multitude of historic treasures, from enchanting castles and stately homes to imaginative gardens and delightful coastal towns.

Edinburgh, Highlands & Breathtaking North Coast 500

July 9th to 19th, 2023 – 11 Day Tour

Join us on an unforgettable Scottish adventure, where we explore the iconic landmarks and historic attractions of the country’s capital, from the atmospheric Edinburgh Castle to the fascinating Royal Yacht Britannia, the Queen’s former floating palace.

Aristocrats & Manor Houses & A Grand Tour to the North

July 16th to 25th, 2023 – 10 Day Tour

Our unforgettable tour explores the architectural grandeur and superb collections of some of Britain’s finest estates and atmospheric time capsules, some still family homes to this day.

A Journey Through the Wonderful Heritage of Wales

July 30th to August 10th, 2023 – 12 Day Tour

Meandering from the South of glorious Cymru to the North, our exciting journey through Welsh heritage encompasses the highlights of this rugged and beautiful country.

An Exclusive Tour of Royal Palaces and Regal Places

August 13th to 21st, 2023 – 9 Day Tour

You are cordially invited on a grand tour of England’s magnificent palaces to follow in the footsteps of the Her Majesty the Queen and other famous royals.

September 10th to 21st, 2023 – 12 Day Tour

The Regal Estates & Jacobean Manors of Norfolk & Suffolk

September 17th to 24th, 2023 – 8 Day Tour

A defining period of British history and culture; for the first time Scotland, Wales and England were united under one monarch, the Jacobean era left its indelible mark on many of England’s historic houses.

Step Back in Time: Traditional Country House Christmas

December 6th to 11th, 2023 – 6 Day Tour

Christmas in England conjures up images of Dickensian London and A Christmas Carol or traditional country houses where families gather around roaring fires.

Yes! Send me a digital brochure of all trips!

• Please check here to join our email list.

This website uses analytical and tracking cookies to improve your user experience and for statistical purposes. By continuing to browse on this website, you agree to the use of such cookies.

Please check your membership status in My Account and click the Renew button if your membership has not lapsed.

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

‘I’m not afraid of anybody now’: the woman who revealed links between National Trust houses and slavery – and was vilified

Prof Corinne Fowler’s report into colonial history sparked a furore about ‘wokeness’ and heritage. We join her on one of the routes from her new book of rural walks that highlight how all our lives – hers included – are entwined with colonialism

S tanding outside Dove Cottage in Grasmere in the drizzle, Prof Corinne Fowler seems a very unlikely looking fire starter. But that is exactly how anonymously apoplectic defenders of crown and country have tended to view her. Fowler was, in 2020, the co-author of a report into the colonial history of properties belonging to the National Trust . After which, as they say in the tabloids, all hell broke loose.

At the moment her report was published, culture war arguments about the country’s past were already primed. The statue of the slave-trading philanthropist Edward Colston had lately been toppled into Bristol harbour; Black Lives Matter marches had brought an end to lockdown; footballers were taking the knee. For some on the right, Fowler’s report became (yet another) lightning rod for their anger.

Most of the academic research in that report was already in the peer-reviewed public domain. Still, the professor was characterised in the Telegraph as being “at war with the past”. Nigel Farage accused her of “trashing” our nation (his own special subject). A group of 59 Conservative MPs and peers calling themselves, without any apparent irony, the “Common Sense Group” declared a “battle for Britain” against “subversives fuelled by ignorance and an arrogant determination to erase the past and rewrite the future”. Sir John Hayes, the group’s chair – and occupant of one of the safest Tory seats in England, South Holland and The Deepings in rural Lincolnshire – condemned Fowler’s report as “unpatriotic”. “History,” he wrote, “must neither be sanitised nor rewritten to suit ‘snowflake’ preoccupations.” (Preoccupations, I guess, such as recorded fact and evidential truth.)

The vitriol was only part of it. As a result of the report, two incendiary parliamentary debates were held about the purpose of the National Trust. A vocal pressure group with opaque funding, Restore Trust , was formed to attempt a takeover of the charity’s board in order to denounce “wokery” – in other words, any reference to the ways in which Downton Abbey fantasies may have been funded by violent colonial exploitation. Country house scones were monitored for signs of sedition – replacing English butter with continental margarine – and found wanting.

To begin with, Fowler admits, she was, understandably, somewhat unnerved by all this outrage. Particularly as the comments sections of national newspaper websites were populated with suggestions about how she should be harmed – the words “woman” and “professor” in the same sentence seemed a particular problem for many of her trolls. For a while she was unable to leave home unaccompanied and was in regular dialogue with the police about threats to her safety.

Eventually, however, and against most advice, she decided to do the most courageous thing: she started to answer her hate mail with courtesy, asking people exactly what upset or angered them and discussing in detail her own research and the historical evidence that supported her findings. Almost always, she says, these exchanges eventually ended cordially, with her correspondents wishing her well (one persistent offender even invited her and her son to visit his private wood in Norfolk). As a result, she came to the conclusion – much needed across all our public life – that “dialogue and openness are always the best antidotes to culture war”.

It was with this belief in mind that Fowler embarked on her follow-up to that report: a dozen walks in rural Britain that are intended to open up a deeper sense of the history that her National Trust project research explored – in particular, the fact that just about every big house and surrounding village in our green and pleasant land “speaks volumes about colonialism’s distinctive phases, dimensions and impacts”. As Salman Rushdie once observed: “The trouble with the English is that their history happened overseas, so they don’t know what it means.” Fowler’s terrific, thoughtful, conversational book based on her walks, Our Island Stories , brings a lot of that understanding back home. “British colonial history,” she says, “requires emotionally intelligent approaches. It triggers everything from ancestral trauma to actual denial… for this reason knowledge is not something to be weaponised, but to be shared.”

Her walks have taken her from the Hebridean whisky isles, Jura and Islay (unearthing the ways they were shaped by the historical links with the Jamaican sugar, tobacco and slave trades), down through the Cotswolds (a landscape that reveals close ties to the East India Company) to the forgotten histories of Cornwall’s tin mines and their relationship to west Africa and the West Indies.

I’m meeting Fowler at Grasmere to retrace the Lake District leg of her journey. She has bought a pack of gingerbread from the tiny shop beside St Oswald’s churchyard where the Wordsworths are buried. The gingerbread has been made and sold here to a “secret recipe” since 1854 – the rum for its butter and the ginger itself were shipped into Whitehaven port from Jamaica by Wordsworth’s patrons, the Lowther family, who had made a large part of their fortune in the slave trade. As we set off to walk around Grasmere and Rydal Water, between the houses in which the poet lived, Fowler cheerfully recounts relevant parts of that history.

I happen to know a fair bit about Wordsworth’s life – I wrote a university dissertation on his revolutionary ideas about rural poverty – so am therefore doubly fascinated to discover the full story of his associations with colonial trade, which hardly figures in any of the literary histories.

There are two strands to Fowler’s telling of it. The first involves Wordsworth’s younger brother John, who was a ship’s captain for the East India Company, with frequent lucrative voyages to China and the subcontinent, which helped to fund William’s early vocation (and supply drugs for friends including Coleridge and De Quincey). In 1805 John Wordsworth set sail for India and China, intending to secure his fortune by illicitly trading opium, on the company’s largest ship, the Abergavenny. But just off the coast of Weymouth, in a storm, the ship foundered on rocks and John and most of his crew drowned. The news came as a huge blow to William, not least because he was left with diminished means to support his sister, Dorothy, and his growing family. The poet replaced the funds he had hoped to receive from John’s colonial adventures with patronage from Sir William Lowther, a former Tory MP and major landowner, whose fortune also relied on colonial trade. The political compromises Wordsworth was required to make – to support life at the bigger house at Rydal Mount – not only in espousing the increasingly conservative views of his patron, but also, as Fowler reveals, trying to secure “Mississippi bonds” in cotton plantations for his daughter, fatally damaged his reputation as a radical (“Just for a handful of silver he left us,” Browning wrote in his poem The Lost Leader, “just for a riband to stick in his coat…”).

Walking through John’s Grove, where William and Dorothy used to lie in the shade and look out over the lake to mourn their brother, Fowler reflects on the ways that in scholarly English departments “the writer’s precarious relationship to money is too often overlooked”. And if you follow that money in the 18th and 19th centuries, as she has done (not only for Wordsworth, but also – pearl-clutchers look away – for Jane Austen), it invariably leads back to the great engine of British capital from the 17th century on, the trade in tobacco and cotton and sugar – and in enslaved people.

For her original walks Fowler chose companions with ancestral connections to empire, who helped her to see the villages, hills and fields in a new light. Her companion in the Lakes was the photographer and artist Ingrid Pollard . Back in the 1980s Pollard, a lover of the Lakes, had became increasingly frustrated at the absence of faces like hers in any of the postcards or depictions of the region. She created Pastoral Interlude , a photographic sequence featuring people of colour in the countryside. “I wandered lonely as a Black face in a sea of white”, one image is captioned.

Pollard and Fowler became friends when they worked together on Fowler’s Colonial Countryside initiative, which brought kids from inner-city schools to country houses and asked them to examine their own biographies in relation to what they found there. “I loved,” Fowler says, “how Ingrid never walks in a straight line. She is always stopping to look at something in a hedge or by the side of the road. She’s a true photographer; she sees everything.”

Colonial Countryside, funded by the Arts Council and the National Lottery, ran from 2018 until 2020. “For me, there is nothing better than hearing a range of British kids talking about what history means to them,” Fowler says. “All these different perspectives, and real hearts and minds stuff.”

She remembers a trip to the Eastern Museum at Kedleston Hall, the collection of treasures that George Curzon, the former viceroy of India, had brought back from his travels. A young girl on her project from Derby walked in and immediately pointed to one of these objects and said “that’s lapis lazuli”. Fowler asked her how she knew. She said: “Well my grandma is from Afghanistan and she brought some pieces with her.”

As part of Colonial Countryside, Fowler invited some of the children’s parents to the National Trust properties. “One or two, of south Asian heritage, cried when they saw some of the items and read what was written about them,” she says. “Several of the volunteers at the properties, who had been there for decades, said to me afterwards: ‘It made me realise for the first time that what we have here is actually more relevant to these people’s history than to ours.’”

The Colonial Countryside work led directly to Fowler being commissioned to do a full audit of the history of National Trust houses. Of course, some of the truths she uncovered were not welcomed by some of the current beneficiaries of those estates. One or two got in touch demanding changes. One woman asked her to remove a whole section about her ancestral pile. Fowler laughs. “It was a strange argument. She did not dispute the fact that her family had indeed invested in a company which traded in enslaved people – by buying South Sea Company shares – but the fact was, the woman said, they had ended up losing out on that investment, so it wasn’t fair to say they had profited from slavery.”

Fowler had to tell the woman that the aim of the report was not to inflict reputational damage on inherited fortunes, but to present a deeper understanding of the facts. As the historian David Olusoga pointed out, “History doesn’t care very much about our feelings… country houses are not a soft play area.”

Walking through the landscape, she says, rather than sitting in an archive describing it, is a good way of bringing these stories to full life. It also offers the kind of built-in natural therapy that Wordsworth would have recognised. “Some of what I have been writing about is quite hard to think about – but the context should make it a gentle book,” she says, “though I suppose I know in practice it will upset some people.”

after newsletter promotion

F owler has been a rambler since childhood. She grew up in Birmingham, where she still lives – she’s a professor at Leicester University – and both of her parents were keen walkers. Her mother, like her, started out as a teacher, before going on to train courtroom interpreters. Her father was a legal aid lawyer in criminal practice. She has a twin sister who is a campaigning podcaster for the Tax Justice Network. They used to walk as a family in town and on trips to Shropshire and Wales. As a student Fowler walked from Land’s End to John o’Groats. On our circumnavigation of the lakes, she sets a fair pace. “Since I turned 50,” she says, “I’ve made more effort to be fit.” I wish, as our walk proceeds, I could say the same. She’s run a few 10ks and is working up to a half marathon.

As part of her research, Fowler felt duty bound, with the help of a cousin, to look into her own family’s history. Her mother’s family is French. She was shocked to discover that her ancestors on that side included enslavers on the Caribbean island of Haiti. “One of them, it turned out, was actually the governor of Haiti just before the slave rebellion led by Toussaint L’Ouverture [strangely the subject of a Wordsworth poem ].” She had no idea. “Perhaps,” she says, with a smile, “I had some unconscious need to work all this history out.” She balances out that knowledge with the fact that her son, through his Venezuelan father, “is descended from Africans who were transported from Benin and the Congo by European slave traders”. The stories prove her point that our island history involves, because of the nature of 300 years of empire, all of the world’s histories, for better and worse.

As we circle past Rydal Mount, and down to the shoreline of Rydal Water, the clouds reflecting in the surface of the lake, we talk about the effect of all the hate mail that Fowler was subjected to. “The lucky thing in a way,” she says, “was that it was lockdown, so they couldn’t easily physically get to me,” though the threats felt real enough.

“It all seems a long way off now – but I do think I will probably get a bit more of it with this book. The thing is, though, I’m not afraid of anybody now. When that many powerful people are that angry with you, after a while you start to think: this can’t be about me personally, it’s about what I represent to them. That knowledge cured me of previous worries. And that’s amazing, because I now feel I can say what I want to say.”

She doesn’t dwell too much on the psychology or politics of those who would rather she kept quiet about some of the more disturbing realities of the history she is uncovering. “It doesn’t need to be a threat to them. It is just adding a layer of information and knowledge. And you have to remember it’s one thing for those people to say that I am spoiling their enjoyment of the past or whatever. What about people of colour having to look at paintings of enslaved people in chains, of which there are more than 300 in British country houses?”

Her research opens up questions of what to do with such artworks and sculptures, the debates currently going on in museums and galleries up and down the land. Where does she stand, I wonder, on the question of whether the statue of Cecil Rhodes at Oriel College, Oxford, should come down?

“To be honest,” she says. “I’m not sure. Removing statues and putting them somewhere else can be very powerful. But I don’t think it is for me to decide. We should be listening more carefully to the people who were most affected by that history. One idea I heard was to leave him up but face him to the wall.”

The revisionist history is only beginning, she believes, and rightly so. It’s not a phase or a fad. “The younger generation are far less precious about British history,” she says. “They are instinctively inclusive; they have to be.”

One of Fowler’s heroes is the classical historian Mary Beard, whom she recently heard give a lecture, “Who Owns the Past?” at the Royal Society. “It was very funny. She started off talking about an Alan Bennett play [ People ], a spoof of the National Trust in which a character finds these 18th-century chamber pots with 18th-century urine still in them – and there is a debate about whether it should be preserved.”

Beard insisted that far from being a recent fracture, the institutional history of the National Trust had always had an enormous amount of internal conflict. Beard’s own campaign would be to see fewer red ropes and thistles on chairs; let the houses live. Her lecture referred to a National Trust visit at which she insisted on sitting with her hosts around an “off-limits” dining table to chat, pointing out to them: “That is what these places should be: a starting point for conversations.”

That is very much Fowler’s perspective. “I wrote this current book partly in response to those people who said: ‘Rather than empire, why don’t you write about the working class in this country, the labourers and servants, why not concentrate on them?’”

She makes the argument that the lives of those ordinary British people were inevitably as intertwined with the subjects of empire, and its commercial imperatives and greed, as those of the big landowners. “The deeper I went into the countryside, the more I found,” she says. One of the telling themes of her book is the way that the practice of land-grabs and subjugation of people abroad was mirrored at home. The big plantation owners abroad were also the plutocrats who walled off common land, under successive acts of enclosure, and shaped the countryside we know today. “It’s funny,” Fowler says, as we approach Wordsworth’s home at Allan Bank, “The other day I was in Suffolk, working with Suffolk museums on some of that history. All the archivist did was put “Jamaica” into the search engine and she wheeled out a huge trolley of documents, amazing stories about the buying and selling of plantations, all belonging to the families from the big local houses.”

As her book shows, the Tories were not known as the landed interest for nothing, and you find their heirs, politically and in some cases physically, in the louder voices of the Common Sense Group and Restore Trust. As Fowler’s work implies, whenever anyone gets irrationally irate about which history is remembered and which forgotten, it’s always worth following the money and seeing who might benefit from the selective amnesia.

“Once you start looking,” she says, “you see these stories everywhere. I could easily do another book with 10 or 20 walks.”

By now, on this particular walk, we are back near where we began, happy to have beaten a forecast storm. I leave Fowler to catch a bus to Windermere and have a wander among the daffodils in St Oswald’s churchyard. The Wordsworth grave plot is where I remember it, but I examine the memorials for William and Dorothy and John with a new layer of complicated understanding. That is the power of history; it is, despite what the “patriots” might argue, never set in stone.

Our Island Stories by Corinne Fowler is published by Allen Lane (£25). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com . Delivery charges may apply

• Colonialism
• The Observer
• History books
• The National Trust
• William Wordsworth

More on this story

Yinka Shonibare CBE: Suspended States review – gorgeously recognisable, but is that enough?

‘Hidden in plain sight’: the European city tours of slavery and colonialism

‘Inevitable’ India’s jewels taken by British empire will be returned, says author

George the Poet: I rejected MBE over 'pure evil' of British empire

Buried: how we choose to remember the transatlantic slave trade – documentary

UK expresses 'regret' over Māori killings after Cook's arrival in New Zealand

Buried: how we choose to remember the transatlantic slave trade

Surge of interest in Ethiopian culture boosts case for return of treasures, says Sissay

Empireworld by Sathnam Sanghera review – the charge sheet against rule Britannia

V&A’s ‘return’ of looted Ghana gold is a new way to tackle Britain’s painful past

Most viewed.