Robert Hunter (National Trust) preserve them for the nation. At Hunter's suggestion it was entitled "the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty", generally known simply as "the National Trust". Hunter was the founding chairman of the trust's executive board. From 1882 until the year of his death Hunter was solicitor to the General Post Office. His negotiations in that capacity were estimated to have saved the British taxpayer many millions of pounds. Hunter was born in the south London suburb of Camberwell, the elder child and only son of Robert Lachlan Hunter, a master mariner and shipowner, and his wife,
National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty under the Charities Act 2006. Its formal purpose is: The trust was founded on 12 January 1895 by Octavia Hill (1838–1912), Sir Robert Hunter (1844–1913) and Hardwicke Rawnsley (1851–1920), prompted in part by the earlier success of Charles Eliot and the Kyrle Society. In the early days, the trust was concerned primarily with protecting open spaces and a variety of threatened buildings; its first property was Alfriston Clergy House, and a decorative cornice there may have given the trust its sprig of oak symbol. The trust's first nature reserve was Wicken Fen, and its first archaeological monument was White Barrow.