How the National Trust has deprived the people of Yorkshire of world-class art

Since 1975 Beningbrough Hall in Yorkshire was home to a collection of Georgian portraits from the National Portrait Gallery. This was a way of bringing some of the riches from this internationally important gallery out of London to the North of England and to display them in a magnificent contemporary setting, just as some of the gallery’s Tudor portraits have found a home at Montacute House in Somerset.

From 1975 until 2019 Beningbrough Hall in Yorkshire housed Georgian paintings from the collection of the National Portrait Gallery

In 2019 the National Trust sent the portraits back to London, where they are now in storage. Beningbrough Hall closed for refurbishment, and when the house reopened, the walls were bare and the rooms previously filled with eighteenth-century paintings now housed unsympathetic modern art of no great importance. For all the money that has been spent on its refurbishment, Beningbrough Hall now looks sad and unloved.

Fine eighteenth-century portraits and furniture were displayed throughout the house until 2019

The paintings and furniture have gone into storage

The dining room was hung with portraits of members of the KitCat Club

Those portraits have now gone back to London