Entry passes · The Stately Homes
Is National Trust membership worth it?
Adult membership is £100.80 a year and covers 147 of the 286 stately homes on this list. Across four visits that is £25.20 a visit; across ten, £10.08. The rest of the answer is geography, and it is on this page.
National Trust adult membership costs £100.80 a year, or £8.40 a month by Direct Debit, read from the Trust's own membership page on 11 August 2026. It covers 147 of the 286 stately homes here, spread across 52 regions and 3 of the four nations. Every one of those 147 charges for entry, so there is no house among them where the card does nothing.
What no page can tell you is the other half of the sum, because admission is set house by house and moves with the season. So this page does the half that is fixed: what the fee comes to per visit, how many covered houses sit within reach of where you are, and where the answer is none.
What it costs
| Membership | A year | A month |
|---|---|---|
| Adult, 26 and over | £100.80 | £8.40 |
| Young person, 18 to 25 | £50.40 | £4.20 |
| Junior, under 18 | £12.00 | Annual only |
| Joint, two adults at one address | £168.00 | £14.00 |
| Family, one adult | £109.20 | £9.10 |
| Family, two adults | £176.40 | £14.70 |
Rates read from the National Trust's membership page on 11 August 2026. Membership also carries free parking at most National Trust car parks, which is worth counting: at the larger houses the car park is a separate charge for non-members.
What that is per visit
The fee is fixed, so its cost per visit falls the more you go. This is the number to hold against whatever the houses near you charge at the gate.
| Visits in a year | Adult, per visit | Joint, per visit for two |
|---|---|---|
| 1 visit | £100.80 | £168.00 |
| 2 visits | £50.40 | £84.00 |
| 3 visits | £33.60 | £56.00 |
| 4 visits | £25.20 | £42.00 |
| 6 visits | £16.80 | £28.00 |
| 8 visits | £12.60 | £21.00 |
| 10 visits | £10.08 | £16.80 |
| 12 visits | £8.40 | £14.00 |
Where it breaks even
Run the same sum the other way. These are not the prices any particular house charges - they are a scale to find your own place on, once you have checked the gate price of the two or three houses you would actually go to.
| If a ticket costs | Adult breaks even at | Joint breaks even at |
|---|---|---|
| £10 a head | 11 visits | 9 visits |
| £15 a head | 7 visits | 6 visits |
| £20 a head | 6 visits | 5 visits |
| £25 a head | 5 visits | 4 visits |
| £30 a head | 4 visits | 3 visits |
Joint membership covers two adults, so one outing by the pair saves two tickets. Its column counts trips they make together, not tickets - which is why it clears sooner than the single fee suggests.
How many covered houses are near you
Membership is only worth what you can reach. Below is every major city this site maps houses around, with the number of National Trust stately homes from this list within 40 miles of it, and the best-reviewed one among them. London leads on 25. A covered house on this list has, at the midpoint, 19 other covered houses within 50 miles of it, which is the density the fee is really being spread across.
| City | Within 40 miles | Best reviewed of them |
|---|---|---|
| London | 25 | Chartwell ★ 4.7, 7,344 reviews |
| Birmingham | 24 | Calke Abbey ★ 4.6, 10,012 reviews |
| Southend-on-Sea | 17 | Chartwell ★ 4.7, 7,344 reviews |
| Bristol | 16 | Stourhead ★ 4.8, 12,142 reviews |
| Liverpool | 11 | Dunham Massey ★ 4.7, 12,022 reviews |
| Manchester | 10 | Dunham Massey ★ 4.7, 12,022 reviews |
| Cardiff | 9 | Dyrham Park ★ 4.6, 5,720 reviews |
| Leeds | 8 | Lyme Park ★ 4.7, 9,762 reviews |
| Newcastle | 5 | Cragside ★ 4.8, 8,296 reviews |
| Edinburgh | 0 | None within range |
| Glasgow | 0 | None within range |
Distances are straight-line from the city centre, so a house at the edge of the ring is a longer drive than the number suggests. Each city links to its own hub, which lists every house near it rather than only the covered ones.
The Scottish gap
Edinburgh and Glasgow return zero, and that is not a hole in the data. The National Trust for Scotland is a separate charity from the National Trust, and the 11 of its stately homes on this list sit outside National Trust membership. If your weekends start in central Scotland, the card covers nothing on this list within 40 miles of you. The two bodies do run a reciprocal arrangement for members of some standing, so read your own terms rather than taking either answer from a directory.
Membership or the Explorer Pass?
The Trust sells both, and they are built for different visitors. The Explorer Pass runs 4, 8 or 14 days from £31.50 for a single adult, which makes annual membership roughly the price of three of them. For one fortnight in the UK the pass wins on arithmetic alone. For anyone going back through the year, membership passes it at around visit 6, on a £20 ticket - sooner where entry costs more.
Where these numbers come from
The membership rates are quoted from the National Trust's own membership page, read on 11 August 2026, and the Explorer Pass price from the Trust's pass page as recorded on our own Explorer Pass listing. Everything else is computed from this site's list at build time: which houses the National Trust runs, which charge for entry, their coordinates, and their publicly available Google ratings and review counts - 434,625 reviews across the 147 covered houses that carry them. No admission prices are held here, and none are estimated on this page.
Check before you buy
Membership rates change, usually once a year, and what is included at an individual property can change with it - some events, car parks and part-year openings sit outside the standard offer. Confirm the current price and the terms on the National Trust's own page before joining, and check the houses you are actually planning to visit rather than the total.
Questions people ask
How much is National Trust membership?
Adult membership for anyone 26 or over is £100.80 a year, or £8.40 a month by Direct Debit. Joint membership for two adults at the same address is £168 a year, a young person aged 18 to 25 pays £50.40, and a junior under 18 pays £12. Those were the rates on the National Trust's own membership page on 11 August 2026.
How many visits does it take for National Trust membership to pay for itself?
It depends on what the houses you would visit charge at the gate, which varies by property and season. The arithmetic is fixed either way: at £100.80 a year, adult membership costs £25.20 a visit if you go four times and £10.08 a visit if you go ten. Against a £20 adult ticket it breaks even on visit number 6; against a £15 one, visit number 7.
How many stately homes does National Trust membership cover?
On this list, 147 of 286 stately homes across 52 regions - 130 in England, 10 in Wales, 7 in Northern Ireland. Every one of them charges for entry, so membership is doing real work at all 147. The National Trust's own figure for its whole estate is more than 500 places, most of which are coast, countryside, gardens and mills rather than great houses.
Does National Trust membership cover Scotland?
Not on this list. The National Trust for Scotland is a separate charity, and the 11 of its stately homes here are outside National Trust membership. The effect shows on the map: of the 11 major cities this site maps houses around, Edinburgh and Glasgow have no National Trust stately home within 40 miles at all. The two bodies do run a reciprocal arrangement for members of some standing, so check your own membership terms before assuming either way.
Is National Trust membership better value than the Explorer Pass?
They answer different questions. The Explorer Pass is bought for one trip of 4, 8 or 14 days and starts at £31.50 for a 4-day single adult, which makes annual membership at £100.80 about the price of three of them. If you are visiting the UK for a fortnight, the pass is the cheaper instrument. If you live within reach of a cluster of covered houses and will go back through the year, membership is.