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Explora: Environment
and Resource Conservation, recreation, or both?

with, and even contradictory to, CCS’s more developed and Glasgow Corporation, long before the NTS came
criteria for acceptance. 67 into being. It was first offered to the NTS in 1938, as an
Stormonth Darling stated that he wanted a similar attempt to protect the land from future development, but
arrangement to that at Culzean, and envisaged a negotiations failed due to the lack of an endowment and the
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partnership (and funding, naturally) with both new local financial weakness of the then fledgling NTS. Legislation
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authorities, alongside other statutory bodies. Strathclyde in 1938 opened up an alternative possibility to secure the
proved uncooperative, seeing Brodick as an essentially future of the estate, and in 1939 a Restrictive Agreement
local facility, but Cunninghame DC was supportive, was concluded between the estate owner and NTS, giving
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in spite of the need for an increased (and ultimately the NTS a right to veto any development on the site or any
unsustainable) level of grant, and an agreement was drawn other action that might detract from its amenity value. The
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up along Culzean lines but with important differences. It agreement provided that the land should remain ‘as open
emphasised the importance to both parties of preserving spaces or woodlands for the enhancement of the beauty of
the character and atmosphere of Brodick, and set up a Joint the neighbourhood and… for the benefit of the citizens of
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Committee with powers to set a budget and general policy, Glasgow,’ and perpetuated the owner’s wish not only to
while delegating day-to-day management to the NTS, as prevent development during his lifetime but also to bind
at Culzean. However, in Brodick’s case, the NTS and the his heirs to this commitment. It was successfully used, for
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Council were equally represented on the Joint Committee, example, to block a Council plan to build housing on part
suggesting that the NTS was learning from experience and of the estate in 1964. 79
wanted a greater say than it had allowed itself at Culzean. 72 Three further attempts were made to gift Pollok to
Brodick was duly designated a country park on 10 April the NTS, all of them unsuccessful. An offer in 1956 was
1980. However, its narrative makes it clear that this was a again declined because of the lack of endowment, and the
product of expediency rather than genuine recreational prospect of significant financial losses accruing to NTS if
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need. The designation made little difference to its appeal Pollok were accepted; similar considerations scuppered
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to visitors, which fluctuated according to the appeal of further approaches in 1962 and 1963. The capital sum
Arran as a holiday destination rather than anything else. needed by the NTS was estimated at £300,000 (around
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CCS agreed to designation against its own advice (and £8.4 million in 2024), but the Restrictive Agreement
clearly against the spirit behind the legislation) because closed off the possibility of selling off part of the property
it needed to expand its portfolio or face accusations of to finance this. Stormonth Darling explored several ideas,
failure. Stormonth Darling was quite clear in his internal some quite radical; one was to sell the house’s art collection
discussions that the purpose of the project – as at Culzean a to the NLF while keeping it on display at Pollok, a proposal
decade earlier – was to reduce overall costs to the NTS and that was carefully considered by the Government (the NLF
to allow it to focus its own resources on the castle. Brodick was significantly underspent at this time) but eventually
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was a further subversion of the country park idea, highly dismissed as possibly illegal because the money would go
questionable in policy terms, but a solution to the partners’ to NTS rather than to the Treasury. He failed to secure
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differing, but complementary, needs and aspirations. a solution; the upshot was that in 1966 the family gifted
the park outright to Glasgow Corporation. On the face
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3.3. Pollok of it, this looks like a dangerous move – it was only two
Like Brodick, Pollok also became a country park in 1980, years since the city had tried to develop the land – but
but the NTS’s interest in it goes back to a much earlier the conditions attached to the gift protected against
date. Its A-listed centrepiece house was the home of one development, and the Restrictive Agreement with NTS
of the NTS’s founders, Sir John Stirling-Maxwell, and remained in force as a further barrier to encroachment. 84
was where the decision to establish the NTS was taken The gift was complicated by the city council’s decision
in 1931. The Pollok estate constitutes what remains of a to provide space within the park for the Burrell Collection,
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once extensive countryside landholding, much of it sold an astoundingly eclectic collection of artefacts collected by
off for development, leaving a 146-ha park and other green the shipping magnate Sir William Burrell over decades and
space as an island of the countryside on Glasgow’s south gifted to Glasgow in 1944 – but still without a permanent
side. Since 1983, the country park has also housed the home, as the conditions attached to the gift had never been
Burrell Collection, an enormous, eclectic accumulation of met. This decision required NTS approval under the
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artefacts and artworks bequeathed to Glasgow in 1944. Restrictive Agreement, and an agreement in principle was
Pollok was opened up for everyday public access in secured which included the setting up of a Pollok Advisory
1911, under an agreement between Stirling-Maxwell Committee (PAC), to be chaired by NTS and giving them

Volume 2 Issue 1 (2025) 7 doi: 10.36922/eer.5890