ABSTRACT
This chapter examines houses where the family retained old textiles rather than replacing them. These houses all had fashionable interiors at one time, and the rooms contained textile furnishings that enhanced the lives of the inhabitants and demonstrated their wealth and position in society. However, rather than renew these textiles when they ceased to be fashionable or when their condition was no longer perfect these families chose to ‘freeze’ their interiors which then deteriorated into a faded and threadbare state. Such interiors say a great deal about the priorities and way of thinking of the families concerned, they had a particular and sometimes quite extreme disposition to preserve their textile furnishings intact. All the examples examined in this chapter are houses that now belong to the National Trust, and this emphasis will allow the link to be explored of families who were motivated to preserve their textiles, and their houses subsequently becoming Trust properties.
