SHE made a fortune from tapping into the British love of country house nostalgia. Soon admirers of Laura Ashley, the designer, may be able to snoop around the rural home where she tried out some of her best-known styles as her children negotiate its sale to the National Trust.

After years of struggling to pay for the upkeep of Rhydoldog House, a Victorian mansion in Powys, Ashley’s oldest daughter Jane wants it sold and opened to visitors.

The National Trust confirmed this weekend it was in talks with the family on the future of the 700-acre estate.

“The home and countryside are what inspired my mother,” said Jane. “The house is a bit shabby but that’s part of its charm. The trust likes the idea that it still feels like a living and breathing place.”

Furnishings and clothes by Ashley became a staple of the middle classes in the 1970s and 1980s. Rhydoldog, 45 miles west of Hereford, is set among the hillsides, country lanes, streams and meadows that inspired Ashley’s floral designs.

Many of the rooms have remained largely untouched since her death in 1985.

If the National Trust deal is agreed, Jane hopes the opportunity to view original Ashley designs in the setting that inspired them will attract visitors from Britain and America, where the brand also became popular.

As well as displaying the designer’s private rooms, there will be a craft centre in the house to teach textile-making, quilting and screen-printing – the techniques used by the company until the 1990s.

Although the family has moved out, Rhydoldog remains filled with quirky objects, old prints and fabrics and Ashley’s pastel-coloured pillows decorated with berries and foliage. The family home served as an office and studio, as well as a canvas for her designs.

“The fact that the business was built in this house over decades is what makes it special,” said Jane.

“A lot of the interiors are perfectly preserved and you can see how the style evolved as you walk around.

“In one of the bedrooms is one of her earliest wallpapers, a very simple, absolutely charming two-colour flower print from the mid1970s.

“There’s a large formal drawing room decorated in 1983 where all the board meetings took place and which would be used for dancing and merrymaking in the evenings.”

If bought, Rhydoldog will join a portfolio of properties run by the trust and formerly owned by prominent cultural figures – they include the Liverpool home of Sir Paul McCartney; Agatha Christie’s house in Devon; and George Bernard Shaw’s home in Hertfordshire .

Although Ashley’s designs seemed to have deep rural roots, the business was actually started in her kitchen in Pimlico, London, where she created printed Victorian-style headscarves and napkins while working as a secretary.

At the height of the brand’s success in the mid1980s, the company sold floral print products in 220 shops in a dozen countries.

Although Laura and her husband Bernard – who died this year – amassed a fortune, the four children say they do not have enough money to pay for the upkeep of Rhydoldog.

“You have to be very wealthy to afford a second home of that size,” said Jane. “I’m on a sort of rescue operation to save it.”

The National Trust and the National Museum of Wales are likely to pay for restoration and maintenance while seeking a private investor to buy the property for an estimated £1m-£3m. The trust said it was “working with the family looking at different options”.

Jane hopes the museum will open within two years but the cost of restoring lost interiors and structural work is expected to cost several million pounds.

Nicky Haslam, the interior designer, said the appeal of Ashley’s brand was the romantic lifestyle it sold, rather than the designs. “In many ways her designs were plain but they had an enduring appeal to a generation of women.”

Colin McDowell, senior fashion writer for The Sunday Times Style, said: “She had nothing to say fashion-wise but her designs appealed to a nostalgic generation.”

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