They believe the Trust has failed to stand up for the tradition of the countryside and aims to overturn the its ban on deerhunting.

Members of a breakaway organisation, Friends of the National Trust, accuse the trust leadership of becoming too commercial and failing in its main task of preserving and conserving the nation's heritage.

• The trust has 2.6 million members.
• Public donations to the trust equalled £7.3 million last year.
• The National Trust was set up in 1895 by Octavia Hill, Hardwicke Rawnsley and Robert Hunter.
• Its first acquisition was four and a half acres of Welsh cliff-land.
• It is the largest non-governmental preservation organisation in the world and Britain's largest private landowner.
• It owns historic houses, important gardens, whole villages or hamlets and hundreds of miles of natural coastline.
• The Trust is independent of state aid apart from the occasional government grant for a specific purpose, and is mainly funded by endowments, membership subscriptions, legacies and rents.
• Among its most visited sites are Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal, North Yorkshire, Stourhead House and Gardens, Wiltshire and Wakehurst Place, West Sussex.