The Landmark Trust

Miss Peak of Chic did a posting today about pineapples and had a wonderful photo of The Pineapple in Dunmore Park Scotland. It instantly shot me back to a summer that my entire family spent in England. It took two years of planning and preparation but we rented two knitters cottages in Tewkesbury, a village on the edge of the Cotswolds. We found these two cottages through a group called the Landmark Trust.

The Trust was started in 1965 by Sir John and Lady Smith. It has preserved a remarkable number of sites across the UK and makes them available for rental at very reasonable rates. We rented two adjacent cottages, furnished very simply and provisioned with almost everything but the food we needed for day to day meals. We were there for six weeks, so we made Tewkesbury home.

The Trust has properties as diverse as Lundy Island, a small island off the coast of South Devon, and the Pineapple. You can rent a water tower in Norfolk and the Castle of Park in Scotland, a House of Corrections and a monastery in Tivoli outside of Rome, a fort in the Channel Islands and a banqueting house in Chipping Camden. Or you could stay in the Pigsty, a former home of two pigs that looks like a Roman temple.

The Trust requires you to purchase a book of their listings, which is updated every year, but here's another resource with listings and pictures. Each property sleeps a different number of people and has different amenities. Take a spin through Landmark Trust's website and see what they have on offer... then imagine living there for a weekend or a week.