Moves to protect and record the historic environment began at the turn of the 20th century with the establishment of the National Trust in 1895, the Victoria County History in 1899, and the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments for England in 1908. The VCH took the antiquarians’ task onto a national stage and applied the standards of the professional historian to a multivolume work that aimed to ‘trace, county by county, the story of England’s growth…into a nation which is now the greatest on the globe.’ (VCH Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, 1,vii).