Alfriston Clergy House of the nascent, but unknown, National Trust to see if it might be interested in taking on the Clergy House. The SPAB put him in touch with Canon Rawnsley, one of the National Trust's founders. Before the Trust decided to acquire the building another founder of the Trust, Octavia Hill, contacted the Society for advice. In her letter she said that they "will be asked to 'restore' it, so far as that odious word means preserve from decay of course we should wish to do so." This dislike of damaging 19th century restoration practices was confirmed by the National Trust
The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists (1914) is a semi-biographical novel by the Irish writer Robert Tressell, published after his death from tuberculosis in 1911, about a house painter's efforts to find work in the fictional English town of Mugsborough (based on the coastal town of Hastings) to stave off the workhouse for himself and his daughter. An explicitly political work, it is widely regarded as a classic of working-class literature. The original title page carried the subtitle: "Being the story of twelve months in Hell, told by one of the damned, and written down by Robert Tressell." Robert Tressell