Our research to date suggests that links to disabled lives are indeed everywhere, threaded through our buildings, landscapes, collections and historical records.
We present 10 stories here, these represent just a fraction of the many connections to disability across the National Trust that we plan to uncover and share in the future.
Image credits: Sarah Biffin, 1821, Engraving by R.W. Sievier (after Sarah Biffin). Wellcome Collection; Queen Henrietta Maria (1609-1669) and Sir Jeffrey Hudson (1619-1682) (after Van Dyck) by Charles Jervas (Dublin 1675 – London 1739) about 1700-39. ©National Trust Images/Derrick E. Witty; King Henry VIII (1491-1547) after Hans Holbein the younger (Augsburg 1497/8 – London 1543). ©National Trust Images; Nicholas Ward, 2nd Viscount Bangor (1750-1827) by Charles Rosenberg (Germany 1745 – 1844). ©National Trust / Peter Muhly; Crazy Jane! A favorite ballad (1800) Set to music, with an accompaniment for the harp, or piano forte, the words by M.G. Lewis Esqr., music by Harriett Abrams. Part of the Lady Lydia Acland Collection at Killerton House; Airmyne Jenney’s speech therapy book from Calke Abbey. ©National Trust; George I style walnut dining-chair tapestry seat in a repeat flower design embroidered by 3rd Lord Bearsted, in the Dining Room at Upton House, Warwickshire. ©National Trust Images/Nadia Mackenzie; Lord Tredegar Courtenay Morgan’s watch ©National Trust Tredegar House, Newport Museum and Art Gallery; Geoffrey Winthrop Young climbing on a crag in North Wales, early 1930s. From Richard Hargreaves’ collection; The Wellbrook Beetling Mill in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. ©National Trust Images/Andreas von Einsiedel