vast numbers of servants. Large service wings, often 19th-century additions, were frequently demolished, as at Sandringham House, or allowed to crumble, as was the case at West Wycombe Park. From around 1900, interior woodwork, including complete panelled rooms and staircases and fittings such as chimneypieces, secured an avid market among rich Americans. In rare cases, complete houses were disassembled, stone by stone, and reassembled in the US; an example is Agecroft Hall, a Lancashire house sold at auction in 1925, dismantled, crated and shipped across the Atlantic, and then reassembled in Richmond, Virginia. The Carolean staircase from Cassiobury Park has come to rest in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, as have elements to reassemble "period rooms" de, including the rococo stuccoed plasterwork from the dining room of the Dashwood seat, Kirtlington Park; the tapestry room from Croome Court; and the dining room by Robert Adam from Lansdowne House, London, where the incidence of lost great residences is higher, naturally enough, than anywhere in the countryside. Stately home tourism Many of Britain's greatest houses have frequently been open to the paying public. Well-heeled visitors could knock on the front door and a senior servant would give a guided tour for a small remuneration. In the early 19th century, Jane Austen describes such a trip in Pride and Prejudice, where Elizabeth Bennet and her aunt and uncle are shown around Mr Darcy's Pemberley by the housekeeper. Later in the century, on days when Belvoir Castle was open to the public, the 7th Duke of Rutland was reported by his granddaughter, the socialite Lady Diana, to assume a "look of pleasure and welcome." Here and elsewhere, however, that welcome did not extend to a tea room and certainly not to chimpanzees swinging through the shrubbery; that was all to come over 50 years later. At this time, admittance was granted in patrician fashion with all proceeds usually donated to a local charity. In 1898, the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty (the National Trust) was founded as a charitable society principally for the preservation of landscapes of outstanding beauty or interest. During its infancy its focus gradually changed to include historic buildings. This was due in part to the millionaire philanthropist, Ernest Cook. A man dedicated to preservation of country houses, he had purchased Montacute House in 1931, one of England's most important Elizabethan mansions, which