U.K.'s National Trust will launch design competition to restore historic estate

Clandon Park © National Trust Images, James Dobson

Last spring, Clandon Park—an 18th-century historic home in a town of the same name in England—was badly burned in a fire. Nine months later, efforts to save and restore it are about to get underway in earnest.

The United Kingdom’s National Trust announced today that it will, in March, kick off of an international design competition to find a firm up to the task of returning the home, one of only a handful of Palladian-style estates designed by Italian architect Giacomo Leoni in England, to its pre-fire glory.

The contest will run over six months, from March 9 to early September, according to a press release from Malcolm Reading Consultants, the firm brought on to oversee the competition.

Though modern and contemporary designs get the biggest share of our adulation, we are also champions of historic homes, from our weekly column, Period Dramas, to series like Renovation Diary, which this year tracked the revamp of an 1870s Victorian farmhouse in Healdsburg, California.

Clandon Park © National Trust Images, James Dobson

Clandon Park © National Trust Images, John Miller