The remarkable story of the National Trust Gangsters

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​Ferguson’s Gang…

1927…Britain's heritage is vanishing. Beautiful landscapes are being bulldozed. Historic buildings are being blown up. Stonehenge is collapsing. 

​Enter Ferguson's Gang, a mysterious and eccentric group of young women who helped the National Trust to fight back.

The Gang raised huge sums of money, which they delivered in delightfully strange ways: Victorian coins inside a fake pineapple, a one-hundred pound note stuffed inside a cigar, five hundred pounds with a bottle of homemade sloe gin. Their stunts were avidly reported in the press, and when they made a national appeal for the National Trust, the response was overwhelming….

Ferguson's Gang was instrumental in saving places from Cornwall to the Lake District, a legacy of incalculable value. Yet somehow these women remained anonymous, secretly meeting at the Shalford Mill, hiding behind masks and bizarre pseudonyms such as Bill Stickers, Red Biddy, the Bloody Beershop, Shot Biddy and Sister Agatha. Huge sums were raised that enabled the Trust to impede the tentacles of creeping urban development.

We finally get to know the women who combined a serious mission with such a sense of mischief. This rather bizarre tale is now being told through a brand new musical that is based on this true local story from the National Trust book by Sally Beck and Polly Bagnall.