How National Trust and English Heritage Places Inspire My Stories

A ruined doorway is rarely just a ruined doorway.

Stand in front of one for long enough and the questions begin. Who used it? Why was it sealed? What was on the other side—and who might have wanted it forgotten?

That is one of the reasons I love travelling around Britain and visiting places cared for by the National Trust, English Heritage and other heritage organisations. I go because I enjoy the history, the architecture and the landscape. Inevitably, though, part of my mind is also looking for a story.

History gives fiction weight

A setting can be invented at a desk, but a real place offers details I would never think to manufacture.

It might be the depth of a window recess, the sudden change in temperature inside a stone passage or the way footsteps sound beneath a vaulted roof. It might be a family portrait hung slightly apart from the others, a scratch in a wooden door or a path that seems to lead nowhere.

Most of these details never appear exactly as I saw them. They settle somewhere in the imagination and return later in a different form.

That matters because atmosphere is not created by repeatedly telling a reader that a place is old or mysterious. It comes from particular things: damp stone, worn steps, salt in the air, a locked gate or a room whose purpose has been forgotten.

I am looking for questions, not just facts

The official history of a property is always important. Dates, owners, battles, rebuilding, religious change and local legends can all provide the foundations of a story.

But the spark usually comes from what the history makes me ask.

Why was this room altered?

What happened here after everyone left?

Which version of the story was preserved—and whose version disappeared?

What would a child notice that an adult walked past?

What secret could remain hidden because generations of visitors had accepted the obvious explanation?

Those questions are useful whether I am writing a darker novel for adults or an Evelyn and Elliot adventure for younger readers.

One landscape can hold two very different stories

My books occupy two separate worlds, but they share a fascination with hidden places and concealed histories.

For Evelyn and Elliot, a ruined priory or ancient house is an invitation to explore. The danger is real, but so are curiosity, courage and the excitement of noticing something everyone else has missed. A weathered carving might become a code. A forgotten name in a guidebook might open an entire mystery.

In my adult thrillers and Gothic fiction, the same setting can become more unsettling. A corridor narrows. A family story does not quite add up. The landscape isolates the characters, while the building seems to remember more than the people inside it are willing to admit.

The place has not changed. The question has.

Why visiting in person matters

Research can tell me when a building was constructed, who lived there and what happened to it. A visit tells me how it feels to move through the space.

I can see which route a character would naturally take, where another person might remain hidden and how far a sound could carry. I can notice whether a grand room feels impressive, oppressive or strangely empty. I can understand how the weather changes the mood of a coastline, garden, ruin or remote estate.

I also pay attention to the journey: the road approaching the site, the first glimpse through trees, the car park after closing time, the view from the highest point and the moment the building disappears behind you again.

Stories do not begin only at the entrance.

The North East is never far away

Living in the North East of England means I am surrounded by places where landscape and history collide.

Tynemouth Priory, standing above the North Sea, helped shape the atmosphere of The Treasure at Tynemouth Priory. Holy Island—with its tidal road, ruins and long stretches of separation from the mainland—became the natural setting for The Holy Island Goblet.

The mysteries are fictional. The feeling of those places is not.

Wind, stone, sea and distance all affect the way a story behaves. They create boundaries, hide evidence and make characters choose whether to go forward or turn back.

A visit does not become a story straight away

I rarely leave a historic property with a complete plot.

More often, I leave with fragments: a photograph, a note, a name, an odd architectural feature or a question I cannot quite let go. One fragment may sit unused for months before it connects with another.

A locked room from one visit might combine with a coastal legend from somewhere else. A line in a guidebook may return while I am planning a villain. A child’s question, asked while everyone else is studying the grandest object in the room, might prove more interesting than the object itself.

That slow combination is part of the pleasure. Inspiration is not always a lightning strike. Sometimes it is a collection of small clues waiting for the right mystery.

The next journey

I want to continue travelling, exploring National Trust and English Heritage sites and discovering the lesser-known places around them.

Not every visit will become a book. It should not. Some places are simply worth experiencing for what they are.

But I will still be watching the doorways, reading the plaques, looking beyond the main path and wondering what the official story has left unsaid.

Because somewhere behind a wall, beneath a ruin or inside an almost-forgotten name, the next mystery may already be waiting.

Explore the Evelyn & Elliot mystery adventures, or discover my adult mysteries and thrillers.