Restoring Britain’s Landmarks, TV review: Nothing quite says mini-break like a gilt ceiling rose viewed through a glass-topped four-poster

This was partly an advert for The Landmark Trust, but with just enough idiosyncrasies to keep things interesting

Anna Keay, director of the Landmark Trust, Alastair Dick-Cleland, conservation manager, and John Evetts, furnishings manager, featured in ‘Restoring Britain’s Landmarks’

This was in part a forty five-minute advert for the work of The Landmark Trust. Fortunately, with enough idiosyncrasies in the mix to elevate it out of televised holiday brochure territory.

In case you’re unfamiliar, The Trust is a charity that restores important, endangered buildings for holiday-makers like you and I (well richer ones than me) to have jolly weekends in, imagining that they live in castles and lighthouses. Or, in the case of Hougoumont Farm in Belgium – the trust goes further afield if the buildings warrant it– the site of a pivotal moment in the Battle of Waterloo.

Belmont House

This opener followed the progress of three projects: Hougoumont, the Baroque masterpiece, the Music Hall in Lancaster and Belmont House, a Georgian villa in Lyme Regis. Dr Anna Keay and Alastair Dick-Cleland from the Trust were engaging and enthusiastic custodians, brilliantly fitting the stereotype of people who spend a lot of time in wellies looking up at gargoyles and the like. “It’s no coincidence he’s got a black labrador, he shares with his lovely dog a boundless energy and enthusiasm for all buildings we are involved with.”said Dr Keay of Dick-Cleland.

The star of the trio was furnishings manager John Evetts. He was accustomed to things going John’s way: “Which blind man chose this?” he thundered over at Hougoumont. “He needs a new job.” The crime? The local team had picked the wrong sort of paint. More John, please.

More work on Belmont House in Lyme Regis

In Lancaster, we saw ornate plasterwork and gilding being restored in one of the bedrooms. Nothing quite says mini break like a gilt ceiling rose viewed through a glass-topped four poster, after all. And who knew you could recreate marble with the help of a swan feather and some cheap lager? Someone should have told Changing Rooms’ Handy Andy that one.

Inside Belmont

Also a revelation for me was Eleanor Coade of Coade Stone fame, the material that was big news in the architecture world in the late eighteenth century. The science-y bit, looking at the make-up of the stone in a lab, was all very well but I wish we’d learned a bit more about Eleanor the woman. I wanted to know what she got up to in the good old days at Belmont House - but I suspect that would be a whole other programme.

@sally_newall