Britain’s National Trust – it looks after historic houses and gardens, industrial monuments and social history sites in England, Wales and Northern Ireland – has launched its own edition of Monopoly in time for Christmas. The “first ever charity version” of the popular board game – devoted to buying and selling property – is on sale at £25 (€28). It features 26 properties, including a mill from the industrial revolution and Winston Churchill’s family home, Chartwell, in Kent.
In the original version of Monopoly, London’s Mayfair and Park Lane were the most exclusive addresses. In the National Trust version these have been replaced respectively by Lyme Park in Cheshire – featured in the BBC’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice – as Mayfair; while Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire – one of Britain’s greatest and most complete Elizabethan houses – is Park Lane.
At the other end of the scale, and replacing London’s unglamorous Old Kent Road, is 20 Forthlin Road, the Liverpool council house and childhood home of Paul McCartney.
Incidentally, Lyme Park – on a prestigious blue square – is valued at 400 units of Monopoly currency while lowly Forthlin Road, on brown, is worth 60. The Giant’s Causeway – on a green square – is worth a respectable 300.
The game can be ordered online from nationaltrust.org.uk. Perhaps the Heritage Council here could take up the idea and produce an Irish version?
