National Trust or English Heritage?

edsks

If you were wanting to join one association - either National Trust or English Heritage - which one would you join and why? Are you a member of either - and do you recommend membership? Thank you.

paulwf

National Trust is worth getting even if just for one year as you can get 30% cashback through Quidco and a free pair of binoculars. I think if you take out EH whilst at a property you can get 15 months for 12 but you'd need to check if that is still running. As EH don't do cashback it would be worth waiting until you visit a property so you can get the maximum amount of time out of it anyway as they refund the entrance fee for that day.

What is best for you may depend on if you have children and how many as they have different charging schemes for kids, and if you have a car as NT have a lot of coastal land with car parks.

Some people alternate between EH one year and NT the next so you don't get fed up of certain places but it depends what you have near you. We have both memberships as we find it useful to be able to visit both types of places when on holiday.

As we live on the south east coast there are more EH places nearby due to the number of coastal defenses. However when we go on holiday there tends to be more NT places in the countryside. This is a very broad generalisation but EH tend to be more castles and NT more stately homes. I think EH have much more variation as they even have some modern stuff such as a cold war nuclear bunker! If I had to choose just one I'd go for EH but that's because I think castles are more fun than stately homes.

Some EH properties such as Dover Castle are around £14 each so joint membership soon pays for itself. Perhaps where it is most useful though is on the smaller properties that are around £5 as they aren't worth the money if you didn't have membership - £14 for a whole day is much better value than £5 for 20 minutes.

Miss_J

I have just taken out membership with the National Trust in the last month. We've done this as we're holidaying in Scotland this year and knew this would save us a small fortune (as NT membership also gives you access to Scottish NT).

As a child my family always had National Trust membership and I've been reluctant until now because I always remembered being dragged around boring places and thought my kids would find them boring too.

How wrong I was. My card only arrived last week and so far we have visited 3 trust properties. We've had great fun at all properties and the NT is now really geared up to children (I don't remember it like this from my childhood). My kids have really enjoyed exploring historical buildings and grounds in our local area and with the summer holidays coming up I'm also planning on visiting some a little further afield.

It's great to pack a picnic, jump in the car and have a lovely day out.

I got my membership through Topcashback and am waiting on £19.66 cashback for the membership. Seems a bargain to me.

tessie_bear

the national trust is fab...loads of lovely places to visit...u can use it when on holiday as well...dont know anything about english heritage...similar i would think to the national trust

Katiehound

I think you need to see what properties you have in your area- or the area where you intend to holiday. As has been said The National Trust own lots of land , -especially in the Lake District and if I remember rightly if you are a member you can park for free (CP charges soon mount up!)
I see that you can pay for English Heritage annual membership with Tesco tokens. Current membership prices are: Adult £44, couple £77. Children are free.
Unfortunately where I live properties in both organisations are very thin on the ground

Safiya_2

Hello

EH membership gives you half price access to all Historic Scotland and CADW properties for the first year, and free access in the second year of membership. Once you join there are also a number of discounts in each region for other historic places.

Safiya

travelgran

You can join NT for Scotland even if you live in England. We did that prior to a Scottish holiday. If you're visiting Scotland it's better because you get the Scottish book. It's also cheaper and gives you access to the English sites as well.

PasturesNew

I read somewhere (on MSE?) that if you join the New Zealand equivalent of NT, then it's cheaper and you can still get into all the UK ones free.

I've not joined either. They're both expensive and there's not many places where I've lived that I'd be interested in paying to go to. As for the car parking at NT, mostly the car parking is only of use to visit the premises, so it's not like you can use their car parks for shopping.

At the moment NT are offering 12 months for the price of 9 (so equivalent to 25% cashback) and a free pair of binoculars if you join online.

NT: £36 singles, £63 families
EH: £44 singles (with this you can take up to 6 kids free, aged up to 19), £77 couple/families

NT have 15 places within a 50 mile radius of me
EH have 7 places within a 50 mile radius of me (5 are burial chambers/outside; 2 are tiny forts)

I'd not rush to go to any of them to be honest, even if I had an "out of area" visitor with me and was taking them sight-seeing.

Katiehound

If you are going to walk in the Lake District many of the car parks are owned by NT so it might be worth joining- they own 21 including Buttermere + Wasdale Head.
I quote:
"We look after a quarter of the land in the Lake District National Park: including England's highest mountain, Scafell Pike and deepest lake, Wastwater, plus 90 farms and hundreds of miles of paths; tracks and stone walls."
So in some places it isn't just houses with grounds..........

sunshinetours

PasturesNew wrote: »

I read somewhere (on MSE?) that if you join the New Zealand equivalent of NT, then it's cheaper and you can still get into all the UK ones free.

I've not joined either. They're both expensive and there's not many places where I've lived that I'd be interested in paying to go to. As for the car parking at NT, mostly the car parking is only of use to visit the premises, so it's not like you can use their car parks for shopping.

At the moment NT are offering 12 months for the price of 9 (so equivalent to 25% cashback) and a free pair of binoculars if you join online.

NT: £36 singles, £63 families
EH: £44 singles (with this you can take up to 6 kids free, aged up to 19), £77 couple/families

NT have 15 places within a 50 mile radius of me
EH have 7 places within a 50 mile radius of me (5 are burial chambers/outside; 2 are tiny forts)

I'd not rush to go to any of them to be honest, even if I had an "out of area" visitor with me and was taking them sight-seeing.

If you have quidco then NT also give 30% cashback aswell as the binoculars and 12 months for 9. Works out at £44 for the whole family for a year (just done it recently as we were going to one of the properties for a function anyway)

Buffy_the_Vampire_Bat

We've been NT members for about 6 years now - we usually get at least double the cost of our membership in terms of visits to NT places (as in if we'd paid for each one, the total cost would have been double the cost of our membership) There's only the two of us and we really enjoy it. We have visited a small number of EH places that we really wanted to visit but these tend to be the smaller (and more cheaply priced) of their sites, so we would struggle to get back our membership in a year normally. However we are thinking of using our Clubcard vouchers to buy EH membership for a year and then making a real effort to visit as many as possible in that year.