English Country Houses and Landed Estates

Heather Clemenson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781032011714
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000393897
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Originally published in 1982, and based on extensive research in estates' archives, this book outlines the changing fate of the 500 largest estates in England over the centuries. It examines estates in their heyday and looks at their changing role as they declined in the twentieth century, showing how some estates have survived and describing the differing uses to which country houses have been put.

PART ONE:

LANDOWNERSHIP AND THE ESTATE IN THE RURAL LANDSCAPE TO CIRCA 1880

1

THE LANDOWNERS

DOI: 10.4324/9781003177494-3

There is no other body of men in the country who administer so large a capital on their own account, or whose influence is so widely extended and universally present. J. Caird, The Landed Interest and the Supply of Food (Cassell Petter and Galpin, 1878), p. 58.

Throughout the history of England one of the most fought over, sought after and desirable assets has been land. Yet despite its importance the question of who owns land has been and continues to be shrouded in an aura of mystique reflected in the fact that in the last 800 years there have been only two comprehensive surveys of land ownership; the Domesday Survey of 1086 and the Return of Owners of Land in 1873, the latter often referred to as the ‘New Domesday’.¹ For the centuries between 1086 and 1873 there is a relative lack of precise data concerning the distribution of land although a body of knowledge, based on the assembly and interpretation of piecemeal evidence, has been accumulated through historical research. It is not intended here to add new evidence to the ongoing debate over the relative ascendency of one group of landowners vis-à-vis another. Existing research for the period prior to the 1873 Return is drawn upon only to establish the changing distribution of land over time. The increasing territorial dominance of large private landowners, the classes of society from which they came, the origins and extent of their landed wealth and the manner by which they chose to display it on the rural landscape over past centuries underlie the present-day heritage of the large landed estates and help to place in greater perspective the changes that have occurred over the past hundred years.

LANDOWNERSHIP DEFINITIONS

A large landowner for the purpose of this study is defined by the possession of 3, 000 or more acres of land and a minimum of £3, 000 annual rental circa 1880. The study population therefore comprises the members of England’s landowning hierarchy as recorded by Bateman in The Great Landowners of Great Britain and Ireland,² a list based on the New Domesday survey. Within this population two major sub-groups are identified on the basis of landed wealth: the ‘great landowners’ and the ‘greater gentry’. A great landowner is defined as possessing a minimum of 10, 000 acres, a figure also used by Thompson in his work English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century.³ ‘Landed aristocrat’ is also used as being synonymous with a great landowner even though the title implied a certain social status and had connotations beyond that described simply by estate size. At the apex of the great landowner group were the ‘land magnates’ or ‘territorial magnates’ each owning a minimum of 30,000 acres.

A member of the ‘greater gentry’ is defined as possessing an estate of between 3,000 and 9, 999 acres with a minimum rental value of £3,000. This size classification is partly based on that adopted by Bateman in that 3,000 acres and £3,000 rental is taken to be the dividing line between the ‘greater gentry’ and the ‘lesser gentry’; the latter classed by Bateman as the ‘squirearchy’.⁴ As the focus of this work is on landed estates, albeit those in private ownership, the economic criterion of size provides an acceptable base from which to begin. Ownership of land cut across the conventional class boundaries that distinguished between the titled minority of the peerage, baronetage and knightage⁵ and the untitled majority, the commoners. Even so, contemporary as well as modern historians have tended to differentiate owners on the basis of legal status, social and political class lines rather than on economic criteria. A problem therefore arises in attempting to extrapolate back in time. Temporal comparison of the relative landed dominance of large private landowners, whether great landowners or greater gentry, is complicated by the lack of consensus among historians as to the precise composition and definition of the large landowner group over time.

The peerage, or landed nobility, generally have been associated with the great-landowner class, even though it has been shown that some were virtually landless⁶ while others in terms of acreage owned would fall within the greater gentry category as defined above. Nevertheless, a number of calculations of the proportion of England owned by great landowners in past centuries has been based on an initial assessment of the number of titled landowners.⁷ There is also inconsistency in the lower acreage limit used to define a great landowner and a tendency to use the term without precise definition on the assumption that the word ‘great’ defines a recognisable landed elite. Cooper, for instance, put forward no minimum definition of great landowner acreage for his assessment of the landed wealth of this class in the fifteenth century although he did estimate that the average land holding of a ‘great knight’ was between 8,000 and 9,000 acres.⁸ For the late eighteenth century Mingay identified the minimum acreage for a great landowner as 5,000 acres, but did suggest that a sum of £10,000 provided a comfortable income to support a great landowner family, and if all were to be derived from rent an estate size of 10,000 to 20,000 acres would be necessary.⁹

The diversity in wealth and origin of the gentry has made chronological identification of this group of landowners even more problematical. Generally the term ‘gentry’ has been used to describe all landowners who derived income from the rent of land, a group often further demarcated on class lines as being comprised only of untitled landowners, that is, ‘landed proprietors, above the yeomanry, and below the peerage’.¹⁰ However, in a definition based on estate size both titled and untitled landowners fall within the group. The inappropriateness of using the broad title of ‘landed gentry’ to apply to a class whose wealth ranged from a few hundred to many thousands of acres has led to a number of attempts to differentiate sub-categories. Trevor-Roper chose to distinguish between those who received income from offices and other external sources - ‘city gentry’ - and those who possessed only landed wealth - ‘mere gentry’ or ‘country gentry’. No acreage figure was used to distinguish either category.¹¹ Mingay used the terms ‘greater’ or ‘wealthy’ gentry and ‘lesser’ gentry or ‘squires’. They owned estates from 1,000 to 5,000 acres, sometimes reaching 6,000 or 7,000 acres; with income ranges from £3,000 to £5,000 for the greater gentry and from £1,000 to £3,000 for the lesser gentry.¹²

It is not intended to argue the merits of respective definitions but merely to indicate the problems faced in attempting a temporal assessment of large landowners spanning many centuries. It is possible, nevertheless, with considerable caution and recognising the problems of inconsistency in definition, to ascertain major trends in the changing distribution of land and the relative proportions of the land area held by large landowners prior to 1880.

LANDOWNERSHIP BEFORE 1880

Large private landowners formed the backbone of the English land system from the Commonwealth to the late nineteenth century, but their landed influence was paralleled in earlier times by that of the Church and the Crown. From feudal times, however, a relatively high proportion of land was already in the hands of the Barons, the upper ranks of the nobility from whom descended many of the great landed families, who together with the Church and Crown constituted the territorial magnates of England.

The sixteenth century was a period of profound social and economic change. The agricultural system underwent adjustment to the growth of commercialism which brought about the initial decline in the subsistence economy of the communal open fields and the rise of farming based on individual occupation and management of land. Commerce and trade expanded and flourished, and the economy maintained a sustained period of inflation which saw a steady rise in prices for almost 150 years. An active land market was made more buoyant following the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the need for short-term finance by the Crown which brought an unprecedented volume of land onto the market and stimulated a period of speculation.

Estimates for the early fifteenth century have suggested that 20 per cent to 25 per cent of usable land was owned by the Church and 5 per cent by the Crown.¹³ The Church lost its landed power with the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536 at which time the Crown became the initial recipient of the large-scale transfer of monastic estates. From 1539 to 1547, however, the Crown alienated much of its newly acquired land and contemporary estimates calculated that from two-thirds to seven-eights was alienated within a decade.¹⁴ Relatively few properties were transferred in the form of grants. The majority were sold. The rapidity of transfer is well illustrated by the example of Hertfordshire where Munby has shown that

of 395 manors or similar estates whose successive owners can be traced through county histories, 168 (42.5%) were in the hands of the Crown in 1540. By 1550 only 12 of these 168 properties remained in the hands of the Crown.¹⁵

The impact of the dispersal of monastic lands varied from county to county. In Lincolnshire most of the land purchasers were already prominent in county society and many who had been, ‘on the fringe of county establishment became firmly members of it as a consequence of their increased wealth’.¹⁶ The bulk of lands dispersed by the Crown in the sixteenth century went to people with Court connections, but not all had possessed land in the first instance. There are notable examples of newly founded landed estates that arose from the upheaval of Dissolution. Thus, in 1540 John Thynne, son of a Shropshire farmer, purchased 60 acres of land for £53 which included, ‘a rabbit warren, orchard, water mill and tumble-down Wiltshire priory called “Longlete’”.¹⁷ As steward in the Earl of Hertford’s household he was in an opportune position to acquire further monastic land, manors and church livings, and through purchase during subsequent years built up a landed territory of some 6,000 acres around Longleat.¹⁸ Other Church properties were also to become the heartlands of large private estates, retaining the name and in many cases the fabric of the Church buildings if not the buildings themselves. Of note are three examples in Nottinghamshire; Newstead Priory, Rufford Abbey and Welbeck Abbey, monastic estates originally carved out of the Royal Forest of Sherwood. In 1537, George, 4th Earl of Shrewsbury obtained a grant in fee of the site of Rufford Abbey and its lands;¹⁹ in 1539 Richard Walley of Shelford obtained the grant in fee on payment of £500 for the Abbey of Welbeck,²⁰ and in 1540 the Priory of Newstead was purchased with 750 acres of land for £810 by Sir John Byron of Colwick.²¹ The three recipients in this case, however, were all landowners prior to their acquisition of monastic lands.

For England as a whole research has tended to support the idea that, ‘very few new or appreciably large estates were built up entirely or even principally out of monastic lands’²² and that the bulk of land transfers were important in altering the balance of property distribution and power among landowners already in existence.²³ The Crown co...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Contents Page
• List of Figures Page
• List of Tables Page
• Preface Page
• Abbreviations Page
• Introduction
• Part One: Landownership and the Estate in the Rural Landscape to Circa 1880
• Part Two: A Century of Change 1880 to 1980
• Appendix One: Great Landowners and Greater Gentry: Per Cent Land Area Owned and Density of Seats Per County c. 1880
• Appendix Two: The Sample Selection
• Appendix Three: The Sample Population
• Appendix Four: Non-private Ownership: Classification of Public, Semi-public and Institutional Landowners
• Index