Sir William Blackett bought Wallington from the Fenwick family in 1688 as a shooting lodge – the family’s main home was in Newcastle. Blackett knocked down the pele tower, using the basement as cellars for his new house.

His son, also called Sir William left the estate to his nephew Walter Calverley on condition that he married Sir William’s illegitimate daughter, Elizabeth Ord. Walter agreed and in 1729, they married.

For the next forty years, Walter reorganised the estate. The house was remodelled by Daniel Garrett, a protege of Lord Burlington, while the gardens and grounds were redesigned with the creation of pleasure grounds, woodland and ponds. ‘Capability’ Brown who went to the local school at Cambo advised on some of the landscaping.

On Sir Walter’s death, the estate was inherited by his sister’s son, Sir John Trevelyan.

Further work was carried out on the house in 1850s by the naturalist Sir Walter Calverley Trevelyan and his wife Pauline. The house became a centre for the arts with guests such as John Ruskin and the poet Algernon Swinburne as well as figures from the Pre-Raphaelite movement.

Sir Charles Trevelyan, idealist and Labour MP, inherited Wallington in 1928 when he was 62. After years of neglect, Sir Charles and his wife began the restoration of the house and estate. But in 1936, Sir Charles made the decision to give the estate to the National Trust. He explained: ‘I do not believe in private ownership of land. By pure chance I own Wallington. I regard myself soley as a trustee for the community…But I can have no guarantee that in the future there might not come owners of Wallington who might want to make money out of the land again…’

In 1942, Wallington was given to the National Trust.