British politician, landowner and Barrister-at-Law
Sir Charles Thomas Dyke Acland, 12th Baronet, DL, JP (16 July 1842 – 18 February 1919), of Killerton in Devon and of Holnicote in the parish of Selworthy in Somerset, was a large landowner and a British politician and Barrister-at-Law. He was known to family and friends as "Charlie", but demanded to be known in public as "Sir Thomas", not only because that was the traditional name of the Aclands, there having been a "Sir Thomas Acland" at Killerton for 170 years, but also because following the creation of a second and much newer Acland Baronetcy ("of St Mary Magdalen in Oxford") in 1890, for his uncle Sir Henry Wentworth Acland, 1st Baronet (the fourth son of the tenth Baronet), he wished people to know "which was the real head and owner of Killerton".[1]
In February 1917 he granted a 500-year lease of almost 8,000 acres of the picturesque and virtually pristine Holnicote Estate on Exmoor, "one of the most beautiful pieces of wild country to be found in England" to the National Trust, in order to preserve it from future development. This more than doubled the extent of the lands controlled by the National Trust, then only recently created. His brother and successor Arthur and nephew Francis, 13th & 14th Baronets respectively, co-operated in the negotiations concerning the gift.[4] The lease was converted into an outright gift 35 years later by his great-nephew Sir Richard Thomas Dyke Acland, 15th Baronet (1906-1990), who also donated Killerton.[5]