Only around 1930 did a few public-spirited landowners and upper-class aesthetes start to rally to the claim that country houses, together with their art collections and parks, constituted 'national and not merely personal heritages' (Country Life, quoted in Treasures for the Nation, p.10). While most of the nobility wanted only to be rid of the expense of maintaining vast, inconvenient old houses, the 11th Marquis of Lothian (owner of several country houses, including Blickling Hall, Norfolk) sought to find some means of preserving them from sale and demolition. His attempts gave rise to the National Trust Act of 1937